What do you do when your Mac friends send you a document, but it is in Pages format? Can it be opened on a Windows PC? How? What software do you use? The solution is quite straightforward.

Pages is a common application on the Apple Mac and is a good word processor that many people use, but it is not available anywhere else and this makes it awkward when you are a Windows PC users and someone sends you a document in Pages format.

If you receive a Pages document via email or some other messaging or file sharing service, how do you view the contents on your Windows PC? How do you open it? How do you edit it?

Go to iCloud

Although at first sight it seems that Pages is available nowhere but on Apple hardware, it is actually available everywhere on every computer. The solution is to use iCloud. If you have iTunes on your computer, and millions of people do, then you have an Apple ID and this enables you to sign in to Apple’s free online office suite and use the applications. Just use your iTunes username and password.

The iCloud applications run in a browser window, just like Google Docs, and Microsoft’s web versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint at the OneDrive website.

Even if you don’t have an Apple ID to sign in with, go to the icloud.com website and then click the link to sign up for free and get one.

Once you have an account, return to the icloud.com website and sign in with your username and password.

Open Pages

The home screen shows a collection of application icons and among them is Pages. This is an online version of the Pages application that is commonly used by Apple Mac users. Click the icon to open it in the browser.

Upload the document

Pages opens with a view of the documents and templates available online. If the pages document was attached to an email, you will first need to save it to disk of course. It will then be in the Downloads folder.

All you need to do is to drag files from an Explorer window and drop them on the browser window running Pages. It is uploaded to your online storage space at iCloud.

Open the document

After uploading the Pages file, click the thumbnail to open it in Pages in the browser. You can view it, edit it and make changes, and use all the facilities of this word processor.

Rather than keep the document online, it might be more convenient to convert it to another format, such as Word, which is more widely used on Windows PCs. Go to the toolbar at the top, click the spanner and then click Download a Copy.

Convert and download

There is a choice of document formats and you can select Pages, PDF, Word or ePub. Click Word and a standard .docx file is downloaded that you can open in Word or any application that supports Word files.

The next time a Mac owning friend sends a document in Pages format, you’ll know how to convert it. It could come in useful occasionally.

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