How come pages won't open PDF files made by Pages?

Does Apple notice that over 1000 people have asked this question and done nothing to support Pages users? I started to Pages a couple of years ago to get away from the extortion costs of Quark and or Indesign. I could open any .pdf in Pages that I needed to edit as a CASA and shoot it right back to my case manager or the Court. Why is Apple so proud of it's products and software when their users lose valuable function of some sort at nearly every upgrade? Over my dead body would I resort to MS Office. Clearly Apple does not honor the larger creative community with its native products. My 2 ¢. 😠 Going for "cute" these days obviously.

marilyn175 wrote:

I could open any .pdf in Pages that I needed to edit as a CASA and shoot it right back to my case manager or the Court.

I think you are mistaken about that. Pages has never been able to open .pdf format as far as I know. In general Word Processor apps do not open .pdf files, you normally need to use Preview, Adobe Reader, or Adobe Acrobat on a Mac. On Windows you can now use Word 2013 to open .pdf, but the current Word for Mac 2011 doesn't seem to be able to do it.

If you have an online reference for Pages or Word for Mac being able to open .pdf files, I would be very interested in it.

Hi Tom,

I was delighted when I signed up for Pages. Clunky yes, but it worked. I've been a graphic designer on a Mac for 25 plus years and have logged too many horror stories of "upgrade" wars which cost me massive lost time, data and money forcibly extracted just so I could finish a project.

When I first used Pages in April of 2012? or there about, I was able to open Word documents exported to .pdf format, emailed to me, which I then dragged into Pages. I could make the changes I needed to make, export as a .pdf, return it back to my client which they could then edit on whatever it was they were using. I'm not a neophyte with this. I've had Original Photoshop as a stand alone, Quark (which locked users out 6 months after I purchased it.) Quark again, Freehand, Pagemaker, Illustrator, Photoshop again, Creative Suite for several upgrades, Acrobat Pro. 2 years ago I lost 6 years of Quicken data and had to and "upgrade" start over. This last go around I had to "upgrade" my Apple ID - yes I had 2 on purpose, lost my Pandora One and my ability to get into the Tulsa County Library website.

At this point, I'm retired and feel like what I've paid for in the past should WORK today. I have a 100+ page cookbook in Quark which I was able to export as a .pdf, that I've lost the tags too, Easier to start over. I have artwork that is hundreds of megs in Photoshop. Not the least bit interested in anybody's "cloud".

Thanks for letting me vent. I'm determined to keep my equipment and software up to date so I can enjoy the skills I've acquired, but I completely cringe at Apple's antics. I truly hate it when I have to respond to some new "tip" or product offer. BooHiss. Happy Turkey Day. Pages is a "turkey" program.

Best regards, mbd

marilyn175 wrote:

I was able to open Word documents exported to .pdf format, emailed to me, which I then dragged into Pages. I could make the changes I needed to make

I just tried it in the old Pages using a .pdf created by Word for Mac. It doesn't work, you just get a non-editable object. But perhaps a .pdf created by Windows Word would work differently...

You presumably still have your own old Pages in Applications/iWork.

Or perhaps you had a system for extracting text from .pdfs (but usually that would delete all the formatting).

It's certainly true that Pages 5 has deleted countless features of great value from Pages 4, but I don't think .pdf editing was one of them.

Hi Peter, I just did a search on Pages '09. Not there. When I purchased a new iMac last April, I had MobileMacsters remove a lot of "historic" software. Again, whatever. Thanks for your response. Going to walk the dog. She accepts all file formats. mbd

If you drag and drop a PDF document generated by Pages ’09/5 onto the LibreOffice application icon, it will open the PDF in LO Draw, where individual text lines are selectable/editable/insertable in the same font/size etc. Images can be selected, and exported (as selection) in their original size, despite Pages image scaling.

Serif's Affinity Designer (OS X App Store) can open PDF for editing, again in the original font metrics.

marilyn175 wrote:

Does Apple notice that over 1000 people have asked this question

Can we stay a little closer to fact please. 1,109 people have looked at this thread, there have been 15 replies, and the number of people who actually asked the question is one (2 including you), hardly "over 1000 people" is it

PDF files cannot be opened and edited by Pages no matter who makes them. To read PDF you use Preview or Adobe Reader. To edit you use Adobe Acrobat or PDFpen.

In addition to Toms answer here is a tip. Always save the Pages document in its native format ( .pages) if you need to edit it later.

You can place pdf files in Pages like a graphic but you can not edit them, never could.

Peter

OKOKOKOK, I must have done a work around somehow. I may have dreamed 2 years of CASA Reports to the Court, I just know they got done, received, edited resent. Whatever. mbd

Probably as .doc files, not pdfs.

You should still have Pages '09 in your Applications/iWork folder, simple matter to test for yourself.

Peter

Just do a find file on the title or the extension. Include all folders, etc. mad

marilyn175 wrote:

…I had MobileMacsters remove a lot of "historic" software.

That was a mistake!

Peter

marilyn175 wrote:

I just did a search on Pages '09. Not there.

You might want to also check manually, via Finder > Go > Applications and see if there is a folder called iWork there.