The required index.xml file is missing.

I just had the same thing happen.

The "backup" file won't open and is giving me the same note.

Try this:

1. Make a duplicate of the file (cmd D), just to be safe
2. Select .pages on the copy and change to .zip
3. When the System asks if you really want to do this, click Use .zip
4. Double click the new .zip file
5. It will now appear as a folder with no extension
6. Append .pages to the end of the folder name
7. Again click on Use .pages
8. Double click on this file to open it in Pages.

What you have done is extracted all the Pages resources from the .pages "package" and reconstructed it.

or

http://www.freeforum101.com/iworktipsntrick/viewtopic.php?t=308

I also got the missing index.xml error message when trying to open a huge document I have for years worked on and added to.

Try this. It worked for me:

1. Single click on the document. This will "highlight" the document icon, but not invoke the error message.

2. Click on "File" in the menu.

3. Scroll down to "Open With".

4. One of my choices in the "Open With" selection is Pages (default) (5.0.1)

5. Click on that choice and the document should open.

In my "Open WIth" selection there is also a Pages (4.0.4), but that didn't work for me.

Now, here is a caveat. If before you open your document you instead first click on an open Internet window, then the "Open With" selection disappears from the File menu. In that case just single click again on the document icon again and the "Open With" selection returns.

I hope this works for you and everybody else as it did for me. I have to say I was so furious I could hardly speak when this happened. Good luck!!

N.B. Pages 4.0.4 doesn't work well on Mavericks. You should have updated it to 4.3. That is what Apple says. But the again....

Nota bene: Tack så mycket for your very nice reply. And you are right, Pages 4.0.4 doesn't work so well on Mavericks. Neither, apparently, does 4.3. My wife has 4.3 and yet has just started receiving the dreaded index.xml error message with some, but not all, of her Pages documents. The single click method opens such blocked documents and thus, since it must be an every- time maneuver, represents no more than a quick, but unsatisfactory, out for what is obviously a much deeper problem.

Listen, I really enjoy your posts. Here in my 8th decade of life I am at best a lower-case user of computers (to employ Peter Breis's designation!!). Yet, I always glean and learn something from your more technical posts, be it some insight, a pick up on the jargon. I judge that I'm becoming more saavy with each. But, then again........

Thanks again.

Here is a link so you can update your Pages and other iWork applications iWork 9.3

Greetings,

After selecting file on Desktop, the "Open With" option in Finder also worked for accessing a Numbers file missing its index.mxl file.

I saw two versions on Numbers in the Open With option.

I open the Numbers file with the newer version "(3.0.1) Nov 14, 2013" and saved the Numbers file.

I removed the old version of Numbers application file from the Dock, and copied the new version of Numbers from the Application folder to the Dock.

Now I can open the Numbers file by double clecking the file icon on the Desktop or from within a file folder.

I can also open other Number files created with the older version of the Numbers application.

I know your problem was with Pages, but maybe there is older or another version of the application being accessed.

Thanks for you tip.

Regards.

William Farrar's instructions enabled me to open several Pages files that had been giving me the message, "index.xml file missing" and refusing to open, after I'd changed to a new MacBook Pro Retina. That was great, because I'd spent a lot of time on those documents. However, after opening them and then saving them, they again came up with the "missing index.xml file" message. I tried saving them using the "duplicate" command but the copy also claims to be missing the index.xml file.

My question is this: After opening the file using WF's instructions, how should the recovered file be saved so the required index.mxl file is present?

My deepest thanks to William Farrar for his post!

Thank you again for some great guidance and advice!! I did indeed download iWork 9.3 and got Pages 4.3.

As it turns out, Apple has been quite clever. Now the documents that previously rendered the "missing index.xml" error now coughs up "You need a newer version of Pages to open this document". This yields two choices: 1) Learn More, and 2) OK. OK makes the window go away, but the document not opening. Selecting "Learn More" takes you the the Mac App Store where you can purchase Pages 5.0

Even if I do the single click on the document, and go to the File Menu to "Open With" and then select Pages 4.3, I get the "You need a newer version of Pages to open this document" window. It does, however, open if I select Pages 5.0, which, as best I can determine, got installed when I upgraded to OS 10.9 with Mavericks. I don't recall requesting that installation, but then, again, my brain is not the thing it used to be.

Anyway, this is too long. I'm not sure what Apple is going to do with a word processing application that practically everyone dislikes, but, being at the level of expertise I am, and that my uncomplicated needs for Pages is quite simple, I will just work around any problems until time comes that Apple fixes the problem.

Thank you again, fruhulda!

Hello, DDDwight,

Thanks for the great advice on getting to the Numbers Application, and I know your steps will be of value and help to many others who are having the same problem!! More than likely many are in panic over some terrifying deadline coming up!

And yes, my problem was with Pages. I am so computer illiterate (dumb, actually, Level 0 on this Forum) that I was trying everything, anything, desperately, to find that enigmatic and elusive "missing index.xml file", to download it and put it back into my Pages Application so that I could simply open a 300 page document that I had been working on for years. Only then, in trying so many variations, did a manner to open my document pop up. Total, complete accident.

It seems that the new version of Numbers (3.0.1) is a completely workable and useful Application. And how did you delete the old Numbers from the dock? Did you just move the icon to the trash? I would like to do that with my old Pages Application, maybe even Pages 5.0.

Pages 5.0 seems to be somewhat unsatisfactory for many, though for my simple requirements it may be fine. I, thanks to fruhulda's suggestion, downloaded Pages 4.3, but still there are some problems.

Thanks again for you solution to the Numbers problem, and though I have yet to use Numbers, I know that many have and that you have helped them. It's all been very strange to me.

Bill

Hello, Whitlock,

First of all, I want to thank you for your very kind words, and then to add that I am extremely happy that the very temporary solution allowed you to open your documents.

For me, I think that Pages 5.0.1 got installed when I updated to OS 10.9 by downloading Mavericks. With that, Apple may have inadvertently disabled the index.xml file in the older Pages Applications. But that is no more than conjecture on my part.

Unfortunately, the procedure to circumvent the "missing index.xml" error message for opening Pages documents that, in absolute desperation, and thus by sheer accident, I stumbled across, is at best temporary, and has to be invoked each time. I wish I knew how to retrieve and install that missing index file, but I don't. Being able to do so is for much younger and sharper minds.

Fruhulda suggested to me to download Pages 4.3, which I did (I was still operating under 4.03!!). Yet, another problem: The "index.xml" error was gone, to be replaced by "You need a newer version of Pages to open this document". I had to laugh. Clicking OK makes the error message window disappear, and you are left none the wiser, but clicking "Learn More" directs you to the Mac App Store where you can purchase Pages 5.0.1, leaving you still none the wiser.

I have since taken to opening a "new" page in Pages 4.3, and then copying and pasting from the "old" document that I opened via going to File in Menu and doing the "Open With" maneuver. It seems to have worked. I can now open such newly created documents without any error messages.

My computer life is much improved from fruhulda's nice suggestion and direction.

Likely, I could C & P into Pages 5.0.1, which I have, and which you may have, too. I have only very simple needs for Pages, just text writing. Pretty simple. Pages 4.3 is fine.

My estimation is that the procedure for getting around the "missing index.xml" problem is only temporary, thus in the long run unsatisfactory, and therefore without resolution to what appears to be a deeper problem. It may just represent a way out of a scary dilemma.

I'm not sure that I may have answered your basic question about saving the retrieved document, though I hope so. If not, then hopefully others will have a solution.

Thank you again for your words, and I really am so happy that you got to open your documents.

Bill

If you have very simple needs for text, why use Pages?

btw Apple has not "inadvertently" done anything. It has deliberately changed formats and hasn't bothered translating between the old and the new, along with deliberately dumping an enormous number of features and adding a bunch of bugs into the mix.

Apple knows Pages 5 breaks Pages '09 files. That is why most of the Pages '09 templates were removed in Pages 5.

Peter

" Fruhulda suggested to me to download Pages 4.3, which I did (I was still operating under 4.03!!). Yet, another problem: The "index.xml" error was gone, to be replaced by "You need a newer version of Pages to open this document". I had to laugh. Clicking OK makes the error message window disappear, and you are left none the wiser, but clicking "Learn More" directs you to the Mac App Store where you can purchase Pages 5.0.1, leaving you still none the wiser."

William, you get that message because you are trying to open a document created in Pages 5 in Pages 4.3. If the document is importatn to keep go File > Export > Pages 09. Then delete the Pages 5 app and don't down load it again. Just use Pages 4.3.

Fruhulda,

Thanks again for your reply and guidance. Duly noted and done.

Bill

Thanks for the work around for now. Just got pages 5.0.1. Ill use 4.0.3 for now. Is there away to default to 5.0.3 as oppsed to the "open with" solution. Just a novice with a question. Thanks.