Pages documents won't open or download

Happened to me too. I strongly advise people to not use iCloud as backup solution. ICloud is ok for sync, but be aware that you cannot restore files to previous versions.

I lost a very important document that I have been editing for months! I assumed using iCloud/iWork combination was a safe store, but i did not know it is not.

I'll chime in with a "me too". iWork for iCloud is horribly unreliable, I've lost many documents due to corruption from its poor syncing. (The document is still visible as an icon, but cannot be opened, fowarded etc etc.)

I am having the same problem although it seems to be with only one document. Problem is it just happens to be the document I have been working on for several weeks now!!!

There is an icon with the document title listed in the app, but pages either freezes or just flashes when I try to open it. If I try to convert it to a word doc or pdf by emailing it, then pages just crashes altogether.

Apple, please fix this.

Same problem here. Can see the document in preview on the iPhone and iPad, but it does nothing when I click it. If I try to "download" it on the iCloud website, it tells me "Document cannot be downloaded".

Thank God I keep it saved separately on a Windows computer, or it would be gone. Not promoting for windows, I'm a big apple fan, but thems the facts.

I CAN open the instructional document that came with pages fine, but not my other document. Tried making a copy and opening that, but no dice there either. Re-uploaded it, seems to be okay now. If this is a corruption issue as common as it appears to be on the message boards, the product is worthless, and I'll be demanding my money back.

Bottom line- DO NOT count on this to be a safe spot to record info, you may not get it back.

I can't help with this but want to add another 'me too'. I spent several days writing 3 articles for magazine publication. They are all now still on my devices - iphone/ipad/icloud on the web, but can't be opened, read, edited or downloaded. What a mess. As a mac user of 20 years this type of problem is becoming much more common than we ever experienced in the past.

Same here. Document that previously worked fine can not be opened any longer...

Another Same here... this has never happened before. I was using the document this afternoon, no problems. I can now see it as a thumbnail, but when I open it, it flashes and disappears. Won't email, convert or save. C'mon Apple, fix this please.

Hey all, I'm not sure if this is related to the same problem you're encountering, but I thought I'd re-post this here in case it helps anyone.

I opened up Pages & Numbers on my iPad this evening, and all the icons were black. Clicking on any of them gave me the 'Document can't be opened' message. If I signed into iCloud.com, I couldn't download the documents either.

After a lot of messing around, it seems like it was something to do with file conflicts. Maybe this all happened when I updated to iOS 5.1 or the new Pages/Numbers App updates last week? I don't know, but somewhere along the line, the file conflicts were blocking all documents from being accessed and synced properly.

The way I fixed it was to fire up Pages & Numbers on my iPhone. It showed me my documents, but when I clicked on them, they told me there were conflicts in the files, and presented me with two options, one a black icon, the other a normal document icon. I clicked on the normal one, and the document seemed to open and load. Additionally, with Numbers at least, the files all updated on the iPad too, and all the documents could now be downloaded via iCloud.com. I had an issue with Pages on the iPad, in that it wasn't updating the documents as I was fixing them on the iPhone, so I simply uninstalled Pages on the iPad, and then re-installed. Once iCloud was enabled, all the documents loaded up properly.

I really can't say if this is the same issue you're experiencing, but I figured I'd mention it.. just in case!!

Also, another tip.. until iCloud gets fixed-up good 'n proper, for your own piece of mind, whenever you edit a document in Pages/Numbers/Keynote, just before you finish-up, hit the 'wrench' icon, choose the 'Share and Print' option, and then click 'Save to iTunes'. Choose the first file type, and it'll save a copy in a different location on your iPad. It only adds a few seconds to your workflow, but could save you a LOT of heartache. If a file gets corrupted by Pages or deleted/corrupted by iCloud, you can simply click the + button on the Documents page, and select 'Copy from iTunes'. This will show you all the documents you saved. They'll also show up in iTunes should you want to pull them off the iPad quickly.

Good luck!

Hi Charlie,

Judging by the time you have probably already sorted it but I had a similar issue recently and managed to get uncorrupted copys from my time machine backup. Check out my post with the links on how to fix it.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4389105?answerId=19999422022#19999422022

I am also having this issue. Documents in Pages on the iPad won't backup to iCloud, and documents in iCloud won't download to the ipad. I've tried everything - turning the documents setting in iCloud preferences off and on, uninstalling and reinstalling Pages, restarting my iPad, using different networks to get online... Nothing works. Very unfortunate, because I really liked the idea of iCloud, and it was working before. I had even paid for more storage, but I cancelled for next year since this wont work. Too bad... :-(

Hi there,

Me and my IT guy figured out the problem, somehow the documents on iCloud lost their extension, I re added .pages or .numbers extension and the problem was solved.

Hey, great! Thanks so much!

Hmm, there doesn't seem to be an option to modify extensions in the iPad Pages app. I assume you were doing this in Lion? I guess I could backup first to iTunes , then modify the filenames...

I also tried emailing a document to myself - which adds the .pages extension for me, but after I open the document in Pages it's the same problem ...