One of the issue’s with Pages is it’s lack of support for the .doc format, which is something that can’t really be ignored as in most places trying to open a “.pages” document would be an absolute nightmare, so for now .doc is here to stay.
Pages work’s fine when saving a document in .doc format, but as soon as you try to save it again (e.g. a simple change to it) you get presented with the following window:
Which is a right pain when you’re trying to do virtually anything with a Word Document, so your options are don’t save until you’re finished and hope nothing goes wrong, keep going through the process above to save the document, or keep on reading to find a simple fix.
It’s all in the .plist
In common with Apple’s other recent “mishap”, there are just a couple of things you need to change in a .plist file. It’s nice & simple and only takes a couple of minutes, or if you’re lazy you can download the file which I’ve posted below.
For the technically minded
What you’ll need
For the sake of easiness I am be going to using Property List Editor, it comes included with Apple’s developer tools, if you haven’t got this installed it is still possible to do so, simply using TextEdit, although that is significantly more complicated, and I would reccomend that you download the .plist file at the end of this entry.
Update (11/8/09): As has been pointed out in the comments the actual plist entries which you are required to edit has changed with updated versions of iWork, please bear this in mind and look out for it when you follow this tutorial!
- First off, you need to open the Pages.app package, to do this simply browse to it using finder, then right-click and click “Show Packages Contents”.
- Now a new Finder window will appear, this allows you to browse around the … Package Contents, although for now we’re only interested in one file, “Info.plist” (in the Contents folder). This is what appears to be Pages’ main configuration file, so by editing it we can adjust the behaviour of it.
- I would recommend that you make a backup of “Info.plist” before you do anything, just in case something bad happens, to do this simply copy it to somewhere you’ll remember (like the Desktop). Now double click on the original file (within Package Contents) to open it with Property List Editor.
- Now we’re getting somewhere, you will see a view of the properties associated, you need to expand the “Root” by clicking the triangle/arrow to the right of it, and then expand the “CFBundleDocumentTypes” in the same way. This gives a list of numbers, and you then need to expand 8 and 9, which will let you view something similar to this:
- The properties which you need to change are CFBundleTypeRole, for both instances (shown above) change them to “Editor” (without quotes), you can do this by double-clicking on where it says “Viewer”. Now you just need to save the file (File>Save), close Property List Editor, and you’re good to go.
- Now when you open up a Word Document using Pages and try to save any pages it should all work seamlessly, although you may notice a small progress bar like this:
Which is nothing to worry about, it just let’s you know that all is working well.
Hopefully that was easy enough to accomplish, if not here’s the easy version below:
For the not-so-technically minded
Here’s a version of the above tutorial which accomplishes the same output but with fewer steps, just to make life easier for you 
- Follow steps 1 and 2 above.
- Download the updated Info.plist from here: Info.plist, you may need to tell your browser to download it (right-click, Save Link As).
- Copy the new Info.plist into the Contents folder of the Package Contents window. Now just close this and re-open Pages to have the ability to save Word Documents.
Conclusion
I think that it is rather odd that this support isn’t enabled by default, after all when you open a document the last thing you’ll want to do is save it somewhere else, as that’s what “Save As” is for. To me it is a completely illogical step for a user to have to take, and I can imagine there being many “.pages” documents inadvertently being passed around by unsuspecting iWork users. Although maybe this is Apple’s way of promoting the software, with the hope that people who receive these “weird” files will end up paying for software that they don’t necessarily need?
I hope that this post has covered everything, and that it is easy enough to understand. If you have any questions please leave a comment and I’ll try my best to help you out.
Update (6/2/09): Inserted link to the pre-built Info.plist, which I forget to add. Oops.
Hi,
thanks for the great hint!
Does it still work after upgrading to iWork 9.0.4?
Chris
Seen your web blog via msn the other day and absolutely like it so much. Keep up the excellent work.
Lee, does this fix work with Snow Leopard? I just tried it out and am not having any luck. Thanks.
Yes, it should do (in theory anyway).
What is the problem you’re having?
Lee
Ah, never mind, it is working. It was a combination of me not understanding exactly how it was supposed to work, and being new to the Mac as well. Thanks for this, it will be a big help to me.
Many thanks to Lee and thanks to Dai Jones! Finally iWorks really works! Your instructions were crystal clear and accurate. I’m not really a technical person, but even I could follow your steps with no problems!
Oddly, this works perfectly for .doc. However, whenever I try to save .docx files I get “The document ‘name’ cannot be saved.” and it doesn’t save.
I notice that there isn’t even a .docx option in the save as or export dialogues in Pages 09. Could that be the source of the problem?
It seems to me that if Pages 09 can’t save .docx, changing that setting to “Editor” is wrong – unless it’s possible to automatically make it save the files as .doc.
Suggestions anyone? I’d love to be able to open .docx and have it change to .doc automatically and save on hitting apple-S.
I think it could be the fact that you are using .docx files, Pages support is dodgy at the best of times and I don’t think its the hugest fan of this new format!
@Kirby Turner Glad it helped you! Hopefully we’ll be getting an updated version of iWork soon with this functionality built in, they have obviously implemented it, but not activated it, maybe because there are a few bugs here & there?
Awesome hack! This greatly simplifies my workflow. I was starting to think I might have to return to Word for editing. Big thanks for sharing!
@George Just looking at Pages now and there should be an option to “Save a copy as: Word Document” Not the clearest thing ever as to me save a copy implies you’ll end up with 2 versions, but this doesn’t happen! Hope that helps you out!
Lee
hi, when i go to save a new document i dont know were to change file extension to the .doc one? i have installed the plist hack and still get no avail. when i change the file extension to .doc i am presented with a box telling me it can be saved in.doc.pages format is this the correct option? great hack though btw
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Thank you Lee Findlow! Free d/l of PListEditPro + your tips means I have a relatively lightweight editor that will handle .DOC files just fine.
Thanks to both Lee and Christian for your help!
Re: my last comment.
As one of the previous commenters noted, I was saving in iWorks 08 format–which fails. Saving as iWorks 09 isn’t available.
Thanks again.
I downloaded your Info.plist file (not having a plist editor) and substituted it in the Pages package. The changes work as advertised, which is great.
But now, if I save a Word doc file as a Pages file, that new file won’t open. I get the message “The document “XXX.pages” could not be read. The document does not have a valid format.” I am using Pages ’09 ver 4.0(727)
Great tip on changing pages. Works perfectly and has quashed one of my biggest bug bears with pages! (only multiple page table cell spanning to go!)
This issue is only in numbers.app, if change in pages.app so pages always open file on main display. I dont know where is problem. I change only this file:
2 (CFBundleTypeName = Microsoft Excel workbook)
3 (CFBundleTypeName = Microsoft Excel 97-2004 workbook)
This issue is only in numbers.app, if change in pages.app so pages always open file on main display. I dont know where is problem. I change only this file:
2 (CFBundleTypeName = Microsoft Excel workbook)
3 (CFBundleTypeName = Microsoft Excel 97-2004 workbook)
I try change some files in numbers.app, but if change on editor so if want open some files .xls so numbers is open always on secon monitor. If a return settings so numbers open normaly on main display.
@Mark I’ll have to look a bit further into it, but hopefully soon I’ll get another post up with info for Numbers too
thanks – I looked at Dai Jones’ comments but could not see how to make the changes that were needed.
@pepe Sorry, but I don’t have the files for Numbers or Keynote, don’t think that there is a working hack for Keynote either – as for numbers I have never looked into it, although I think if you browse through comments here there is some help
@JustB errm, thats a weird one … so you mean to say from a fresh install it doesn’t work correctly? Sorry but I’m not quite sure qhat to say to that, maybe worth contact apple/checking their support forums.
@Tom honestly, no ideas on that, I think it is probably set to .doc by default for greater compatibility, so not sure if it could be changed.
@Mark No I haven’t, maybe will do some day though – I think the comment from @Dai Jones will be helpful there though
this is fantastic! Thanks.
Have you done a similar thing for Excel and Numbers for .xls files?
Thanks
Any ideas on how to make Pages save .docx as the default instead of .doc?
Thanks!
Hi thanks for the tutorial. I have a slighty diferent problem. I can save my pages doc as a word file, or at least it is giving me the option, but near the end of exporting it tells me it can’t save the doc because of an unkown error. That’s all it says. Pretty anoying.
Tried to save it to pages ’08, same thing.
Any tips would be very welcome.
Ps i did try the things with the info. plist but no salvation yet.
could somebody upload the file for Numbers and Keynotes.
THANK YOU A LOT!!!
Tried it with RTF in Pages, Excel in Numbers, and PowerPoint in Keynote. RTF and Excel work great, but Keynote refuses to play ball, still converts ppt files to a native representation
I’d guess some of the types are only there to support opening OR saving, not both. AppleWorks files open in pages, say, but I don’t think Pages can save AppleWorks so the editor mode would be redundant (I’d speculate). PDF files can be saved from Pages, but not opened, so again editor mode is redundant
Best tip ever, many thanks. Using PListEdit Pro I was able to get the values in terms of file type for the document type numbers in each program. I changed the value for Type 4 in Pages’ plist, and now RTF files show the same behaviour – when I open them in pages, they stay in RTF format. I’d guess when an iWork app opens a document of a particular type, it first checks the plist to see what mode it should open that document in. The default mode for non native formats is viewer, so it automatically converts the file on opening to a native file format for editing. However, if you create a file in Pages, say, and save it as Word, then the plist isn’t referred to so the behaviour doesn’t happen, hence needing to close the file and open it again to get the desired behaviour. Not so much a bug, more a missing feature. Anyway, here are the codes:
Pages:
0 (CFBundleTypeName = SLDocumentTypeNativePublication)
1 (CFBundleTypeName = SLDocumentTypeNativeSingleFilePublication)
2 (CFBundleTypeName = SLDocumentTypeNativeStationery)
3 (CFBundleTypeName = SLDocumentTypeNativeSingleFileStationery)
4 (CFBundleTypeName = SLDocumentTypeRichText)
5 (CFBundleTypeName = SLDocumentTypeRichTextBundle)
6 (CFBundleTypeName = SLDocumentTypePlainText)
7 (CFBundleTypeName = SLDocumentTypeSimpleText)
8 (CFBundleTypeName = Microsoft Word document)
9 (CFBundleTypeName = Microsoft Word 97 – 2004 document)
10 (CFBundleTypeName = Microsoft Word template)
11 (CFBundleTypeName = Microsoft Word 97 – 2004 template)
12 (CFBundleTypeName = SLDocumentTypePDF)
13 (CFBundleTypeName = SLDocumentTypeAppleWorks)
Excel:
0 (CFBundleTypeName = LSDocumentTypeNativeDocument)
1 (CFBundleTypeName = LSDocumentTypeNativeSingleFileDocument)
2 (CFBundleTypeName = Microsoft Excel workbook)
3 (CFBundleTypeName = Microsoft Excel 97-2004 workbook)
4 (CFBundleTypeName = Microsoft Excel add-in)
5 (CFBundleTypeName = Microsoft Excel template)
6 (CFBundleTypeName = Microsoft Excel 97-2004 template)
7 (CFBundleTypeName = Microsoft Excel macro-enabled workbook)
8 (CFBundleTypeName = LSDocumentTypeTXT)
9 (CFBundleTypeName = LSDocumentTypeCSV)
10 (CFBundleTypeName = LSDocumentTypePDF)
11 (CFBundleTypeName = LSDocumentTypeAppleWorks)
12 (CFBundleTypeName = LSDocumentTypeOFX)
13 (CFBundleTypeName = LSDocumentTypeNativeStationery)
14 (CFBundleTypeName = LSDocumentTypeNativeSingleFileStationery)
Keynote:
0 (CFBundleTypeName = BGDocumentTypeShow)
1 (CFBundleTypeName = BGDocumentTypeSingleFileShow)
2 (CFBundleTypeName = BGDocumentTypeTheme)
3 (CFBundleTypeName = BGDocumentTypeSingleFileTheme)
4 (CFBundleTypeName = Microsoft PowerPoint presentation)
5 (CFBundleTypeName = Microsoft PowerPoint 97 – 2004 presentation)
6 (CFBundleTypeName = Microsoft PowerPoint slide show)
7 (CFBundleTypeName = Microsoft PowerPoint 97 – 2004 slide show)
8 (CFBundleTypeName = BGDocumentTypeAppleWorks)
Thanks for the hack, Lee. This is something that’s always bugged me about Pages. Very useful!
@Luca Lattanzio Unfortunately I think you have met one of the many bugs in this system, since it is essentially a “hack” support isn’t perfect, so I’m afraid there doesn’t seem to be a solution regarding any of your problems, sorry about that and taking so long to reply!