How do I convert old Pages documents to Pages '13?

I have a document I created with an old Pages version. When I try to open it in Pages '13, I get the message :

This document is too old. Please open and save with Pages '09

I don't have Pages '09 and I don't know where that old version of Pages is and if it will run on Mac OS 10.9.

Is there an easy way to convert the document? If there is no easy way, is there a way to at least extract the text from the document?

Solution 1:

You can still get iWork 09 via this method [though I've not tried this to go back to 09, you may need to remove the latest versions first, or just zip them up - not tested]

Got to Softpedia

Click on External Mirror 1

This will download iWork09Trial

Open the dmg & run the installer

You may need to fight against the current version & Software Update may keep nagging you to update. As I say, I've never tried this to revert to an older version

Solution 2:

I've posted a general solution for all three iWork programs here, but here's what to do for Pages.

This solution requires using Terminal. Do the following:

1. Make a backup copy of your file
2. Open Terminal.app
3. In the Terminal window, type cd (that's with a space after the cd) then drag your file to the window. It should insert the full path of your file (e.g. /Users/me/Documents/My\ Great\ File.pages).
4. Copy and paste the following command as a single line and press Return: gunzip --stdout index.xml.gz | sed 's-:version="72007061400"-:version="92008102400"-g' > index.xml
5. If you don't see any errors (such as No such file or directory), now type rm index.xml.gz and press Return
6. Type exit and press Return and try to open your file. It may give you a compatibility problem report but should open.

Explanation

The file index.xml.gz is a compressed XML file that holds information about your document. The command in step 4 uncompresses the file and runs it through a search-and-replace program which looks for the version 72007061400 and replaces it with the version 92008102400 (I don't know what these versions mean but it appears to work). It outputs to an uncompressed version of the file, which is why in step 5 you remove the original, compressed file (iWork will used compressed or uncompressed files).

Notes

If step 4 gives you a No such file or directory error, it's possible the index.xml file is uncompressed, in which case you can replace the step 4 command with sed 's-:version="72007061400"-:version="92008102400"-g' index.xml | gzip > index.xml.gz, and step 5 with rm index.xml.

This solution could be adapted to an Automator action by someone motivated.

Source

This method is adapted from a similar solution for Keynote documents which I found in a comment on this Google+ post.

Solution 3:

Interestingly the Preview app shows the file. I could salvage all of the text and most of the formatting through simple copying and pasting (although only page per page).

I opened the context menu for the file in the Finder and selected "Open in ...". Preview was one of the sensible options.

Another option in the "Open in ..." menu was the image editor Acorn. When I tried opening the pages files with Acorn, it displayed the document thumbnail that's apparently stored in the Pages file. The thumbnail file has enough resolution to read the text and see the old layout.