HT202879: About the new iWork for Mac: Features and compatibility

Learn about About the new iWork for Mac: Features and compatibility
revpaulseymour
Level 1 (0 points)

Q: Does Pages not open .RTF

Does Pages not open or export to .RTF files? Publishers often want files in RTF format or do I need to join the dark side again for proper file formatting? I am sure I used pages in the past!

iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2012), OS X Mavericks (10.9.2)

Posted on Mar 16, 2014 4:24 AM

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revpaulseymour

Q: Does Pages not open .RTF

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  • by rkimball,Helpful

    rkimball rkimball Mar 16, 2014 4:40 AM in response to revpaulseymour
    Level 1 (115 points)
    Mar 16, 2014 4:40 AM in response to revpaulseymour

    Pages 4.3 ("Pages 09") opens and can export RTF files. Pages 5.1 cannot. But then the list of what Pages 5.1 cannot do, compared to version 4.3, is approximately 100 items long. It includes

     

    - bookmarks (that's right, no bookmarks in 5.1!)

    - 2-up viewing

    - ability to set alternate left/right marigns & headers & footers

    - ability to view comments while editing

    - ability to print comments

    - mail merge

    - meaningful Applescript and Services support

    - status bar so you can see at a glance how many words and pages there are in your doc, and what your current page is

    - advanced find/replace (not that it was so great in 4.3, but it is REALLY dumbed down now: you cannot even serach for invisibles)

    - ability to set default zoom

     

    and on and on and on.  Also, 5.x introduces many serious bugs, including, (but by no means limited to) the ability to export links to PDF files reliablity.  And speaking of links, you can no long drag in linked test from a browser. The text vanish and you are left with the html link.  Nor can you insert hyperlinks to other parts of your document. There have been many reports of data being corrupted and documents being trashed. In short, as an early reviewer put it, Pages 5 is an unmitigated disaster. Avoid it.

  • by VikingOSX,Helpful

    VikingOSX VikingOSX Mar 16, 2014 10:30 AM in response to revpaulseymour
    Level 7 (21,009 points)
    Mac OS X
    Mar 16, 2014 10:30 AM in response to revpaulseymour

    No need to go back to the dark side. Get latest LibreOffice. In addition to read/write .doc/.docx/.rtf, it also reads all versions of MS Publisher, and Visio documents.

  • by revpaulseymour,

    revpaulseymour revpaulseymour Mar 16, 2014 12:09 PM in response to VikingOSX
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 16, 2014 12:09 PM in response to VikingOSX

    Still it seems a shame that Apple have not kept with a perfectly good format. Scrivener publishes to it but Apple seem to have forgotten that publishers still ask for documents in RTF. At least the dark side may be avoided but it's not exactly slick software. Thanks though folks.