you need a newer version of pages to open this document

Copy the information and paste it into TextEdit.

I may sound stupid, but: how? I can't open the document.

I understand.

Email the document to me and I will open in the new version and save back to 5 and as a word doc witha new name.

kitktd@icloud.com

that is really nice. I just did.

Thanks!

your address seems to be invalid

Try kelley@ktd.com

Sorry the iCloud is ktdkit@icloud.com

I sent it to both adresses, hope you received it. thanks again!

did you receive it?

This private conversation is rather irrelevant to the usage of Pages.

As a last resort for files that won't open, but you need to get the text back, rather than the layout/styling:

an alternative way of seeing the file contents, is to "right-click" the file and chose "Show package contents". There will be a preview jpg, but only if the file has been saved with "include preview in document".

This jpg will show the text well enough to be OCR'ed using something like PDF OCR X.

The actual Pages document is in index.zip. This is in .iwa, and can be opened (once you've worked round the "...cannot be opened because it's from an unidentified developer") in a text editor (BBEedit works). You will have to right click to open it, but there are lots of weird characters in amongst the text, so this would be only worth doing if you are desparate to recover the text.

thanks karabuni (sorry about the private part of the conversation)

it seems de jpg only shows the first page of te document, which is in this case only a fragment of the content. (Deleting tons of characters is a bit too nerve-wrecking an option just before an exam...).

A real incredible bummer, this is the kind of story I used to hear from PC-users years ago - not being able to open a text document anymore, I can't believe this is actually the case.

I will have to conclude there is actually no way to reopen the doc - I really hope, but do not expect, that anyone can tell me that isn't so.

Thanks for your help

If it's any help, and you have access to a text editor that can search using grep (regular expressions), such as BBEdit or Text Wrangler, this will strip out non a-z, A-Z, 0-9 characters.

Right click your Pages file.

Show Package Contents

Double click the Index.zip file to unzip it. The folder "Index will appear.

Open the "document.iwa" file from the Index folder in a suitable text editor.

Use Find - replace all, and check "use grep" (or similar).

Paste this in the "Find" box:

[^a-zA-Z0-9,.;: -]

and nothing (noting even a space in the "Replace" box.

Click "Replace all".

All characters except A to Z and ,.;; (space) and - will disappear. Other characters can be added, but if accented ones are included, much more of the styling "code" will remain.

It will leave some odd stuff, but might be better than nothing.

thank you again, Karabuni, I really appreciate your effort!

Unfortunately I stranded again, there seem to be only jpeg previews in the document folder.

In your Pages file, using "View package contents" will give you a folder looking something like this:

You need to unzip the Index.zip file, to show the "Index" folder:

Inside the Index folder:

Document.iwa is the one with the text in, and a lot of formatting letters much of which can be trimmed away using the grep pattern in my last posting. The other .iwa files don't contain anything much that you'll have typed, except perhaps Author's name.

The preview.jpg can be used for OCR, but as you said previously, is only the first page. The "Data" folder will contain images used in your document.

I just noticed on your screenshot, that there doesn't seem to be the Data folder or Index.zip, unless not all of the package files are showing in the window.

If they aren't there, then I don't know what else to suggest, unless you have Time Machine, when you might find an older version of your work.