Documents in Pages appear blank

I also could see the contents of Pages & Numbers files is previews, but they were blank when opened. Apple tech support--in an hour long call--managed to find a fix for my macbook pro. I hope it works for you.

Concurrently to the seemingly blank files, my computer happened to be slowing down & stalling a lot, but while related to the problem, I don't know that this is a necessary symptom of anyone else's.

We deleted all the cache files in the ~/Libary/Caches folder, & emptied the trash. It said some files were in use, so we restarted and finished the trash disposal. Then we started up Pages & Numbers, and it was all good! My computer went back to its normal snappy responses too.

I am sure someone could possibly narrow down which cache files might be causing an issue. But give this a try.

By the way, I am running Pages 9, on Mountain Lion 10.8.4 (recently updated). Disk Utility found preferences and disk verify normally. Activity Monitor showed no excessive CPU use and there was no shortage of hard drive space. The problem was reproducable in safe mode. Deleting plists for iWork had no positive result. Sometimes the computer would get stuck in spinning beach ball mode for a while, or freeze. The only think that worked was the cache purge.

Good luck!

It has nothing to do if it is latest version or not of Pages. The problem is in the communication between Pages and Lion 10.7.3 or 10.7.4

AJ, some are helped by uninstalling and reinstalling iWork. You cannot completely delete iWork by moving the iWork '09 folder to the Trash. Instead, use Yvan Koenig's script:

• Go to http://www.box.com/s/00qnssoyeq2xvc22ra4k

• Choose public_YK > for_iWork'09 > other_iWork'09 items

• Click on uninstall iWork '09.zip, decompress it, open it in AppleScript Editor and click the Run button

Restart the computer and reinstall iWork again.

I had the same problem, called Apple Support thanks to workindog's post, and they fixed it. Here's the instructions for cleaning out the caches etc. Be careful:

DO NOT DELETE THE FOLDERS THEMSELVES!!!! OTHERWISE YOU'LL HAVE TO REINSTALL THE OPERATING SYSTEM

go to Library > Caches

Select everything IN THE CACHES FOLDER and drag to Trash, BUT DO NOT EMPTY THE TRASH, AND DO NOT DELETE THE CACHES FOLDER ITSELF!!!!

go to Library > Launch Agents

Select everything IN THE LAUNCH AGENTS FOLDER and drag to Trash, BUT DO NOT EMPTY THE TRASH, AND DO NOT DELETE THE LAUNCHAGENTS FOLDER ITSELF!!!!

go go Library > Saved Application State

Select everything IN THE SAVED APPLICATION STATE FOLDER and drag to Trash, BUT DO NOT EMPTY THE TRASH, AND DO NOT DELETE THE SAVED APPLICATION STATE FOLDER ITSELF!!!!

THEN RESTART THE COMPUTER

THEN, AND ONLY THEN, EMPTY THE TRASH, BUT MAKE SURE YOU DIDN'T DRAG THE FOLDERS THEMSELVES INTO THE TRASH BY MISTAKE

She said this problem is caused by too often putting the macbook air to sleep instead of shutting it down and restarting. So you may also solve the problem by shutting down and restarting. If you follow these instructions, though, it speeds up the computer quite a lot, so if you use it intensively, then maybe do this every six months or so, just be careful about the folders so you don't stuff up the operating system

I tried all the above suggestions with no success. I finally reinstalled the operating system, I am using OS 10.7.5 Lion and that worked to restore being able to see the text on my Pages documents.

Have you updated your Pages '09 to the latest version v4.1?

Peter

Exact same problem here. Other text apps like TextEdit work.

This Pages bug is very frustrating, as I intended to use it with iCloud in a multi-Mac setup. (And TextEdit does not fill my needs.)

Any solution out there?

I'm having a similar problem as AJfromLA. I had a school biography write up to do so the night before it was due to be presented, I polished it up to make sure that it was perfect to be able to discuss. So after I made changes, I saved the document as always (I've gotten into a good habit of doing that) and then re-opened directly after so that I knew the changes were made, no problems here. So I shut my laptop down (MacBook Pro 15 inch mid 2013) and went to bed.

Problems started to happen when I arrived at school the next day, powered on my laptop and nothing was there, there was no text in the Pages "choose a document" screen and when I went to open the document I went from having 3 pages and 1000 and some words to 26 pages and 0 words, all pages were blank.

Any suggestions please?

Thanks,

Will

This is a "me too" - I just installed a brand new iPages 09 (version 4.3) and No Text. This is going to make it very difficult to edit my documents with Pages ...

and from what I can read - no one has a fix - even Apple.... Mystery.

I know the text is there. I can print the doucment. I can convert it to pdf. I can do everything but read it on the screen!

Mouintain Lion 10.8.5.

if anyone comes up with a solution - I'd love to hear about it. :-)

This advice was fantastic!! Not only did it recover my blank Pages documents, it recovered my RAM from 21 MG to 12 GB and my computer started up without a problem-whereas it was taking me an hour to get it started, because there was a blank grey or blue screen, and I only got it open by various maneuvers like shift key or PRAM reset. And then it would shut down again. So thank you Pandit2013 for posting this!

This advice was fantastic!! Not only did it recover my blank Pages documents, it recovered my RAM from 21 MG to 12 GB and my computer started up without a problem-whereas it was taking me an hour to get it started, because there was a blank grey or blue screen, and I only got it open by various maneuvers like shift key or PRAM reset. And then it would shut down again. So thank you Pandit2013.

I am currently having this exact same problem. Did you find any fixes? Were you able to retrieve the blank files?

I am freaking out over this.

Same problem here - the doc elements are there, but not visible.

Where did you save the document??

I had saved the document just under the Pages folder I guess you could call it and its supposed to automatically sync to icloud as well but when I went to sign into there as well, same problem.