How do i recover a corrupted pages 09 document - "The document does not have a valid file format"

Question

Level 1

0 points

How do i recover a corrupted pages 09 document - "The document does not have a valid file format"

I was reverting a document when my computer froze. After I restarted, Pages was unable to open the file. I recieved "The document does not have a valid file format" notice. I'd been saving versions but can't seem to access them without opening the original document file. Is there some way to recover the text or is it gone for good? I can still see the Pages document and it appers to be the right size. Anyone know of any tweeks, recovery software, etc. that could help me?

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.5)

Posted on Jul 12, 2013 2:50 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Yellowbox

Level 7

20,383 points

Jul 12, 2013 4:55 AM in response to tatters1

Hi Tatters,

Can you open the document in Preview or TextEdit?

Right click (or control click) on the document in Finder and Open With

If that works, you can copy and paste into a new, blank Pages document.

How large is your document? Pages does not handle large documents well. If it is large, split it into several smaller Pages documents.

Regards,

Ian.

Reply

Answer 2

tatters1 Author

Level 1

0 points

Jul 16, 2013 9:29 AM in response to Yellowbox

Thank you Yellowbox. Sorry for my delay in response... I don't have steady Internet access as I'm traveling. I have tried to open in preview with no success and TextEdit brings up something but it is not any kind of letters, it looks like a strange code to me. The pages file is 246kb. I tried running the scrips from this thread http:/https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3303794 and was successful at pulling up all of my old versions of pages files from the hidden folder. The 3rd script worked to open and view old versions on uncorrupted files... but every version of my corrupted file still came back with "the document does not have a valid file format." Some of these versions were over a week old so I asume that the file format issue effects all versions of the corrupted file. Is there a any other ideas out there? Data recovery software, etc that will let me get to the text? It's a lot of writing... months or work, and would hate to lose it. I'm not a big fan of this versions idea... now I always make a duplicate as well as the version save.

Regards back,

Tatters

Reply