Cannot edit documents on MacBook Air running macOS

workerbee2 wrote:

Interesting! I have copied your suggestion: Annotate a PDF in Preview and will study it. I have used Office 2011 since probably 2011 and could always make corrections once it got to the Document file.

You can’t possibly still be running Office 2011 on a Mac that runs Tahoe. Regardless, the reason you could edit the file is because you saved it in the native format of the office app you were using.

Now, apparently everything is a PDF unless I start in Pages. Is there a way to make information in another style other than PDF which could be corrected?

Yes, save it in the native format of the app you are using. If Pages, then use the .pages format.

If you wish to edit a PDF that someone sent you, you will need a PDF editor like Acrobat. Preview is just a viewer. Normally, nobody should be expecting you to edit a PDF. That is a “final” distribution format. The original is usually in some other editable file format like docx, pages, xlsx, etc.

workerbee2 wrote:

If you say that I have to be using an app, what I'm using is an app called "Document".

Please post a screenshot of the top line of your screen where the left most item is the apple icon.

Are you using MS Word? In some cases you need to log in to your office account before you can edit documents.

You must be using some app, whether it's Finder or some other is important for us to know to help you properly.

When you are trying to edit your document, please look at the top left end of the menu bar next to the Apple logo. The name of the app you are using at that moment will appear there. What is it?

Why not?

What happens when you try?

What App or apps are using to edit your documents exactly?

Provide details and context about your issue, and someone may be able to advise.

click here ➜ Writing an effective Apple Support Communities Question - Apple Community

As others have suggested, to even see the contents of a document, you have opened it in some application. The name of that application will be displayed in the upper left next to the apple menu.

If I had to guess, you are trying to edit a document such as a PDF file that is uneditable because it's actually an image (such as a document that was scanned).

That is an App. It's called Preview.

Now, what exactly are you trying to edit?

Some field within the document which may not be editable?

Or the name of the file shown at the top next to the side bar icon.

For the name at the top, you can hover over it and a down arrow should appear, you can click on it to get the editable fields and type a new name in there.

You are using the app called Preview. It’s not designed to edit text documents. Here are the instructions for using it:

Annotate a PDF in Preview on Mac - Apple Support

You have to be using an App, otherwise how you getting to the file in question. Yes, the Finder, the Mac's file manager, is an app.

Assuming you are looking at the file in Finder, to edit the name of a file in Finder, you can either click once on the File and then hit the enter key on your keyboard. This will cause the name to be highlighted and you can then start typing.

Alternatively, you can click once on the file and then after a bit click a second time on it to again cause the name to be highlighted and be editable.

If you are finding the file somewhere else, then you need explain clearly where that is. Remember , we cannot see your screen, so you need to be very clear about what you are doing.

. I have pages and use it.

Then why aren’t you saving in pages format. File > Save.

You have to go to extraordinary means to save it in some other format.

Please let me know how I can get the formats docx and xlsx. Those sound interesting

Buy a current version of Office.

If you are now using the Pages app for your document creation, I invite you to bookmark this link for reference: Pages User Guide for Mac - Apple Support

When you save a document in Pages, it is automatically given the .pages filename suffix and is saved as a Pages document.

If you regularly must exchange documents with Microsoft Word users, you can export or convert your .pages documents as .docx (Word) files that your cohorts can open and edit. Apple provides this guidance for converting a Pages document to a Word document: Convert Pages, Numbers, or Keynote files to Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, and more - Apple Support

That link above includes the guidance for converting Numbers files to Excel files and also the reverse.

EDIT - and you can bookmark this guide for the Numbers app: Numbers User Guide for Mac - Apple Support