DOCX from new Pages "can't be opened"

[jason.siegel]

Recently I opened and edited in Pages a very long draft of a forthcoming publication. I exported to DOCX. Now, I cannot open the document. In Pages, I get the error that it "can't be opened." In Word, I get the attached error. The filename is simply EEA.docx.

What is going on?

 

[jason.siegel]

Can anyone help? This is a real problem.

 

[Dobbs2]

Can anyone help? This is a real problem.

What OS and versions of Pages and Word?

 

[jason.siegel]

Mavericks. The new Pages. Word 2011.

 

[firedept]

Just tried converting a New Mavericks Pages file to .docx file and had no problem opening it up with Office for Mac 2011. Pages file did not have any real formatting in it, just basic type on 3 pages. Also tried this in Numbers to Excel with some formatting in the file and no problem with it either.

Try;
1. Open Word
2. Click the Open Folder
3. Browse to where your file is located
4. Change the Files of Type combination box to "Recover Text from Any
File (*.*) from the Enable list.
5. Select your document
6. Click Open

Not saying it will work. But give it a try. You'll lose any graphic content but may be able to recover the text.

Although there is a slim possibility that the file name contains illegal characters it isn't the most likely cause. You can easily test by locating the file in Finder, renaming it to something strictly containing alpha characters & moving the file to a folder from which you have no problem opening other files. If Word still balks you can be certain that "invalid characters" isn't the problem. More likely, the file has been damaged in some way or has content that Word cannot interpret.

Hopefully you still have the Pages file to work with or at least a backup of it. Can not help you beyond this info.

 

[jason.siegel]

Unfortunately that turned it into complete gibberish. Sigh.

 

[AllergyDoc]

I opened a .doc file with the Pages today and everything imported great. This was essentially a table I used to format a form to be printed and filled by hand.

When I exported to .doc and .docx formats, the table almost completely disappeared. The doc turned to gibberish.

 

[blueshirt31]

Did you try exporting another document to .docx format from pages? Does it exhibit same behaviour? Exporting/saving to a different format should not delete or touch your original file/format.

There are a few things you can do, besides already mentioned. Try opening the file with another program such as OpenOffice/LibreOffice which handle .docx files. If they can open it re-save it again as a new document. Try opening the document using one of the online services iCloud (Pages), Google Docs, Microsoft... Try using another computer to open it. Strange, but sometimes applications can be broken and reinstall could fix it. Try using different version of software Pages 09 for example.

See if anything from this link helps: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/285393

Never tried this, just Googled it, try repairing it online: https://online.officerecovery.com/word/

Not much of a help, but if you do not have a backup of your document the only thing you can see if you can recover some data.

 

[jason.siegel]

Ok, so I went back to the original DOC, opened it in Pages, and saved it as a Pages file. It opens perfectly. If I take that same Pages file and export to DOCX, it becomes unreadable. So there appears to be some sort of corruption happening in the export process, and the document is not stuck in Pages format. Any thoughts?

----------

And if I export to DOC rather than DOCX, there is no corruption. Interesting.

 

[ppenn]

Recently I opened and edited in Pages a very long draft of a forthcoming publication. I exported to DOCX. Now, I cannot open the document. In Pages, I get the error that it "can't be opened." In Word, I get the attached error. The filename is simply EEA.docx.

What is going on?

the message says you saved it as an XML file...you perhaps clicked the wrong button...


try converting it here.


http://document.online-convert.com/convert-to-doc

 

[roadbloc]

the message says you saved it as an XML file...you perhaps clicked the wrong button...

docx, xlsx, pptx etc are all Open XML files.

 

[ppenn]

docx, xlsx, pptx etc are all Open XML files.

I must have misread...I didn't notice it was "open." Thanks.