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User profile for user: eklavyarjun
eklavyarjun Author
User level: Level 1
8 points

Not able to open old pages files

Hi all,


There are some old .pages files in my system that I had created around a year back. When I double click on them, nothing happens. When I right click on the files and open them with pages(default), nothing happens. When I open pages first and then try to open the files from inside pages, once again, nothing happens. I had never compressed these files and they have always been stored on either my system's internal hard disk or my backup external hard disk. The documents are not locked and the permissions on the document are ME: read & write, Staff: read-only, and Everyone: read-only.


Strangely, I don't get the preview of the files either when I press option+space and the system doesn't allow me to change their names either. Also, when I created a copy of any of those files, the copy had a size of 170-180 bytes as against the original file size of 700-800 Kb. Also, strangely, when I press cmd+option+i, I see a mismatch in size; for example, for one of the files (117 Kb), I see Size: 1,17,310 bytes (4 KB on disk). What does that mean? Why is only 4 KB on the disk and where is the rest of it?


I tried opening the files in safe mode but it didn't work either, and also tried to open them using the cloud version of pages. Also, I tried to convert one of the files (as an experiment) to .doc format but none of the online converters recognised that file either. Can anyone help me open the files? They are sort of important for me. I am using Pages version 10.2 (7028.0.88) on MacOS Catalina version 10.15.7 (19H2).

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Jan 17, 2021 8:13 AM

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User profile for user: eklavyarjun
eklavyarjun Author
User level: Level 1
8 points

Posted on Jan 17, 2021 6:32 PM

Figured out the issue, sort of. Writing it here in case it may be of some help to someone else. Long back I used to use Google Backup and Restore to maintain a copy of all important files on my drive. It turned out that in the process of syncing, somewhere down the line at some point, the files got corrupt, either because of my own negligence or some sort of technical complexity that is beyond me. I don't think that part can ever be figured out. Nonetheless, I downloaded a copy of my files from my Google Drive (luckily I recalled that I used to do that prior to my reinstalling the OS) Those backups work absolutely fine while every other backup I have at any other place seems to be a backup of the corrupt files.

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User profile for user: eklavyarjun
eklavyarjun Author
User level: Level 1
8 points

Jan 17, 2021 6:32 PM in response to VikingOSX

Figured out the issue, sort of. Writing it here in case it may be of some help to someone else. Long back I used to use Google Backup and Restore to maintain a copy of all important files on my drive. It turned out that in the process of syncing, somewhere down the line at some point, the files got corrupt, either because of my own negligence or some sort of technical complexity that is beyond me. I don't think that part can ever be figured out. Nonetheless, I downloaded a copy of my files from my Google Drive (luckily I recalled that I used to do that prior to my reinstalling the OS) Those backups work absolutely fine while every other backup I have at any other place seems to be a backup of the corrupt files.

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Not able to open old pages files

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