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How can I move my iBooks Author file to Pages in Big Sur and open them. It just crashes Pages.
My band new Mac mini arrived today and I'm bitterly disappointed that it cannot open an IBA file. I wanted to extract the template and create a new book. I have all the chapters ready in Pages text files but the templates on offer are a poor selection.
Mac mini, macOS 10.15
I found a workaround. I opened my iBooks Author IBA file on my old MacBook Pro (Catalina) where it still works and created a new book using the same template. Then I moved that new IBA file to my new (Big Sur) Mac mini and it opened in Pages without a problem. The original IBA file was very big almost 200 Mb so perhaps too large to handle for Pages. I still needed some text and images from the original to transfer to my new book, but I got around that by saving it as a PDF and moving that. Now I can copy and paste from the PDF file to Pages and create my new book. Problem solved!
I found a workaround. I opened my iBooks Author IBA file on my old MacBook Pro (Catalina) where it still works and created a new book using the same template. Then I moved that new IBA file to my new (Big Sur) Mac mini and it opened in Pages without a problem. The original IBA file was very big almost 200 Mb so perhaps too large to handle for Pages. I still needed some text and images from the original to transfer to my new book, but I got around that by saving it as a PDF and moving that. Now I can copy and paste from the PDF file to Pages and create my new book. Problem solved!
Pages just crashes if the IBA file is bigger than 170 pages or 40Mb. Clearly the testing regime at Apple Pages developer community needs to go back to the drawing board. I tested it by importing a chapter at a time from Word or Pages files and tested it periodically to see if Pages could open it, sixteen chapters and it bombed. This was on my MacBook Pro as well as on my M1 Mac mini. So the issue is with the latest version of Pages.
As for editing a book in Pages using an IBA template, forget it. It is so limited in relevant features as to be a joke. e.g. No horizontal scrolling within chapters. This is a pure token gesture by Apple, not fully tested and lacking key features.
My brand new M1 Mac mini is only 3 days old and currently parked in the corner and disconnected. It simply doesn't do the job. So I'm back to my 6 year old MacBook Pro and living in hope that when Rosetta 2 comes along I can at least run iBooks author on it in emulation.
My fear is the bad old days of 9 years ago when iWeb was withdrawn will return and we will be losing iBooks Author as well.
Thank you for letting me know. However, Apple have been sneaky here. iBooks Author is simply not available to download anymore, so it will not it be installed on the new M1 silicon, and not given it a chance to run in emulation mode under Rosetta 2.
Rosetta 2 is already there.
Pages in Big Sur will not open iBook Author files
