Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Opening a Pages Document on a Windows Computer

Here’s a workaround…. if you are on a Windows computer (at home or at work) and receive a Pages document that you wish to open.  (Note: this works for Keynote and Numbers files, as well.)

The newer versions of iWorks files (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) are actually archives containing a number of files. You can view those files if you change the extension of the Pages file from .pages to .zip.

You can then unzip the file and view its contents. It will contain a QuickLook folder (which, logically enough, contains files required by Mac OS X's Quick Look utility). If you open up that QuickLook folder, you'll see a file named Preview.pdf, which is a PDF version of your Pages document. As a Windows user you won’t be able to edit that file without a PDF editor, but you can read it and print it just fine.