Pages cannot open file File

pages

I had to force quit Pages as it was not responding (apparently my computer ran out of application memory and almost all applications stopped working).

After restarting (which involved force quitting all those applications including pages), some (but not all) of the files that were open in the previous session cannot be opened. The error message I get reads

"File" can't be opened right now.

Pages couldn't read the file.

The file exists and was apparently modified at a time after I worked on it last but well before the restart.

Is there a way to re-claim the file or at least the text in it?

Edit. It does not appear that the file is damaged, because even if I recover a previous version from backup, Pages cannot open that either (nor does it want to open a copy). So, it appears that the file is somehow locked.

Best Answer

As it happens, the problem was very similar to another problem with preview I had previously, only that the error message was not claiming a permission issue.

The solution was, consequently, equally similar to that of the problem with preview:

I removed the sub-directory ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iWorks.Pages/Data/Library/Saved Application State/com.apple.iWork.Pages.savedState
I quit Pages and re-started it.

Related Solutions

MacOS – Pages 4.3 on Mavericks – data loss with filenames beginning with tilde (~)

While the tilde is reserved in Unix to shortcut the users directory, it's also used by Pages, Numbers, and Keynote (as well as the Office apps) to prefix temp cache/version files. They are invisible to the user via the Finder. I would try navigating to the folder with the command line and see if it shows up with an ls -larth. Best advice is don't use "~" as a prefix for iWork or Office documents.

Google Drive client fails to sync Pages documents

I can't be sure but I suspect this may be due to Apple's autosave and versioning system.

So I found and tried this to disable it:

defaults write com.apple.iWork.Keynote ApplePersistence -bool no
defaults write com.apple.iWork.Pages ApplePersistence -bool no
defaults write com.apple.iWork.Numbers ApplePersistence -bool no
defaults write com.apple.TextEdit ApplePersistence -bool no
defaults write com.apple.Preview ApplePersistence -bool no

Then create then edit a new document multiple times, and it syncs fine.

There is metadata (extended attriutes?) or something (hardlinks?) on existing documents though, so they may need to be "saved as" under another name, and the original removed.

Initial results show that I don't have file sync issues anymore but I can't be quite sure if my fix is effective or I'm lucky, or an Apple update put things in order. Whatever, feedback would be helpful.

I opened a topic on Google Drive's support forum but with limited hope.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MacOS – Pages 4.3 on Mavericks – data loss with filenames beginning with tilde (~)

Google Drive client fails to sync Pages documents

Related Question