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Is there any automated way of converting Pages 4.3 documents to MS Word document format?
I know that I can open each one in Pages and Export them, but prefer not to have to manually do it to all my files.
Switching to MS Word so, I'd like to move all my existing Pages docs to Word format. Tired of this 1 step forward, 5 steps back approach of Apple when it comes to their productivity apps. They cease to be productivity apps.
Hi there,
Apologies for resurrecting this old thread, but in case anyone else stumbles by here I thought I'd mention that you can do this with some third party Pages actions for Automator. Take a look here:
Why would anyone want to pay $12.50 when there are plentiful examples of free Pages to Word export solutions in this community?
You should declare that you receive no compensation or other consideration from ghostotter when you paste a link to a fee-based product — or that you do.
Well, mainly if they don't want to get their hands dirty with AppleScript. Not everyone is comfortable with code. I'd suggest that if the actions save a user more than a couple of hours messing about with AppleScript then they were a good investment.
You're right though, in the interests of transparency I should have declared that I'm the developer of said actions - if anyone has any ideas for additional actions then let me know.
Agreed.
Have you had a look at using Automator to do the opening and exporting for you?
Peter
Actually was looking for either a script or workflow that someone had already done to perform this.
I am so aggravated over this iWorks debacle. It's like Dewalt Tools reinventing the saw with all kinds of new features and innovation. Marketing it as the last saw you will ever need. However there's one caveat: it doesn't cut a straight line because in their corporate re-imagining of the saw they didn't see a need to be able to cut a straight line because curves are so much prettier.
To add insult to injury we are then told to send feedback to the company to let them know that it should do what a saw is supposed to be able to do - cut a straight line. Are we to assume they didn't know that a saw is supposed to be able to cut a straight line and that we'd be upset when we found out it didn't? Are we dealing with 2 year olds or professional developers? To call Pages 5 "the last word in word processors" and to have removed the productivity tools that are just part of page layout/word processing like link text boxes, mail merge, applescripting etc; is just an insult and a demonstration of a lack of consideration to the end user.
Professional people can't afford to reinvent work flows every time Apple innovates and in the process breaks everyone's workflow. It takes the productivity out of the productivity.
Apple needs to spend some of those billions of cash reserves, hire a bunch of programmers and fix this NOW, not later. iWorks Pages needs to be brought up to feature parity with the old Pages within weeks, not months, and they need to inform their customers of their intentions to do so. Right now we are left to assume that within 6 months only window dressing is going to be added back in with no indication of hardcore features returning. We are also left to assume that old Pages will eventually become unfunctional with OS updates, as Appleworks eventually did. We need to know they are going to fix this, not have to hope that they will. Either that or we need to find a solution that works now and has a track record of on going stability.
There have been scripts around, but I stopped trying to maintain the ones I wrote, as the script dictionary changed each version. You may be helped by http://pagesfaq.blogspot.fr/2008/01/export-folder-to-word-rtf-pdf-txt-or.html . There are more links to other attempts at http://pagesfaq.blogspot.fr/2006/11/i-have-one-thousand-pages-documents-to.html .
Thanks I have looked at a number of scripts, most failed for the reason you mentioned. I managed to get one working. Pasted the following into Applescript Editor and saved as an application to the desktop. You can then drag and drop files from any directory and it converts them and saves in the same directory as the original pages document.
on opentheFiles
tell application "Pages"
repeat with aFile in theFiles
openaFile
set docName to name of front document
-- Remove .pages extension.
set prevTIDs to AppleScript'stext item delimiters
set AppleScript'stext item delimiters to ".pages"
-- Add .doc extension.
set docName to first text item of docName & ".doc"
set AppleScript'stext item delimiters to prevTIDs
-- Get folder that dropped file exists in.
tell application "Finder"
set sourceFolder to (container of aFile) as Unicode text
end tell -- Finder
-- Save file to folder that dropped file exists in.
set docPathAndName to sourceFolder & docName
save front document as "Microsoft Word 97 - 2004 document" in docPathAndName
close front document
end repeat
end tell
end open
Every so often one finds something on the internet that is really beautiful and this is one time for me. Thanks Edward. Your little script has saved me a LOT of time.
I keep getting the following error message: "Can't make 'Microsoft Word 97 - 2004 document' into type constant." Am I doing something wrong or is it perhaps because I have Word 2011?
Thanks!
Hey Foxygenn,
I got yo back! Try this:
on openaFile
tell application "Pages"
openaFile
set docName to name of front document
set sourceFolder to POSIX path of aFile
set newsourceFolder to characters 1 thru -8 of sourceFolder as string
set theFolder to newsourceFolder & ".docx"
export front documenttoPOSIX filetheFolderasWord
close front document
end tell
end open
Perfect, thank you nscozzaro!
Good. If you select multiple files, this version will do them in batch and deletes the original, so you are only left with the .docx:
on opentheFiles
tell application "Pages"
repeat with aFile in theFiles
openaFile
set sourceFolder to POSIX path of aFile
set newsourceFolder to characters 1 thru -8 of sourceFolder as string
set theFolder to newsourceFolder & ".docx"
export front documenttoPOSIX filetheFolderasWord
close front document
end repeat
end tell
tell application "Finder"
repeat with aFile in theFiles
deleteaFile
end repeat
end tell
end open
This is perfect -- does just what I was looking for initially. Thanks so much!
Thank you very much, nscozzaro,
Also, I wanted one that does multiples without deleting the originals. So, with my inept programming skills, I goofed around until I got this one which seems to work also.
Here it is, just in case anyone else needs it:
on opentheFiles
tell application "Pages"
repeat with aFile in theFiles
openaFile
set docName to name of front document
set sourceFolder to POSIX path of aFile
set newsourceFolder to characters 1 thru -8 of sourceFolder as string
set theFolder to newsourceFolder & ".docx"
export front documenttoPOSIX filetheFolderasWord
close front document
end repeat
end tell
end open
It will drive you crazy to manually convert a large number of files. Try iWork Converter( http://tyorex.com/iWorkConverter )!
Auto-Convert Pages Documents to Word Documents
