New to Pages - Read .rtf documents?

Question

New to Pages - Read .rtf documents?

Hello everyone,

I'm new to Pages (just got my new iMac with Yosemite), and have a question regarding importing some (not all) documents saved with WORD as .doc or .docx -- when I open the documents in Textedit, I can see all sorts of formatting information, but Pages will not recognize them ("unable to import Rich Text Format).

How can I convert these documents into a format that will be accepted by Pages?

When I try to save these documents via Textedit and hold 'Option' and attempt to 'Save as...' I can't find any option to change the format.

Thanks in advance,

Bill

iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10.3), null

Posted on Apr 25, 2015 6:03 AM

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Answer 1

Apr 25, 2015 6:15 AM in response to William Tomcanin

File Format:

down the bottom of the Save dialog.

Peter

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Answer 2

Apr 25, 2015 6:28 AM in response to PeterBreis0807

Thanks for the prompt response, Peter.

The .doc files that I am having trouble with contain the following information in their headers:

{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg10000\uc0

Textedit displays detailed formatting information rather than opening the document as Rich Text Format, and Pages recognizes the document as Rich Text format.

The only options appearing at the end of the 'Save as...' menu refer to changing the Unicode formats -- is that what you meant?

For a genuine .rtf file, the 'Save as...' menu gives me several options, including various Word formats.

I appreciate any advice!

Thanks,

Bill

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Answer 3

Apr 25, 2015 7:35 AM in response to William Tomcanin

Pages '09 opens Word files or .rtf.

Pages 5.5.3 won't open .rtf and will open but can considerably alter Word files.

This is my TextEdit Save As…

Peter

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Answer 4

Apr 25, 2015 7:38 AM in response to PeterBreis0807

My Textedit "Save as...." menu looks like this:

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Answer 5

Apr 25, 2015 8:05 AM in response to William Tomcanin

Check your Preferences:

Peter

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Answer 6

Apr 25, 2015 8:23 AM in response to PeterBreis0807

Thanks, Peter.

Yes, my preferences in TextEdit are exactly as yours... I am at a loss as to why I cannot see the same options as your "save as..." menu.

I can PM you the particular document and see if you experience the same issues if you would like to try that? Perhaps it has something to do with the "rtf1" which appears embedded in the document header?

Bill

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Answer 7

Apr 25, 2015 8:36 AM in response to William Tomcanin

Normal Word documents (.doc, .docx) are binary data, and do not have this RTF preamble at the beginning of the document. TextEdit will only show RTF syntax in RTF files — if instructed to do so in its preferences. Uncheck the following:

I can rename a proper RTF document and give it a .doc/.docx extension. It does not become a Word document, but rather remains, and is identified by applications as an RTF document. I can manually prepend your RTF preamble to the front of a normal Word document, and it will be recognized as RTF, not as a Word document. You can open this invalid document in TextEdit and the preamble is visible, along with mostly distorted Word content.

Whether valid or mangled documents, Pages v5 will not open any recognizable RTF content.

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Answer 8

Apr 25, 2015 8:43 AM in response to VikingOSX

Thanks for your help, Peter. That is likely the issue with these documents. They are somehow "mangled" .rtf saved as .doc or .docx

Bill

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Answer 9

Apr 25, 2015 2:26 PM in response to William Tomcanin

…or more likely they are not Unicode but in some other encoding.

Open them in Word for Windows and resave them as unicode. Something for which the PC version of Word is very useful.

Peter

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