Pages to Word
Convert Apple Pages to Word (.docx).
Click to upload or drag & drop
Select a Apple Pages document (.pages)
How to use the Pages to Word
- 1Pick the .pages document
Locate the Apple Pages file on your computer, or drag it into the panel above.
- 2Convert it to Word
Press Convert to Word. LibreOffice reads the iWork document through its libetonyek importer and writes a .docx.
- 3Open it in Word
The converted document downloads by itself, ready to edit in Word, Google Docs or anything else that reads .docx.
Examples
| Input | Output |
|---|---|
Pages '09 document (XML) | The most faithful conversion |
Pages 2013 or later | Text and structure; layout may drift |
Word-processing document | Flowing Word body text |
Page-layout document | Floating Word text boxes |
Password-protected file | Cannot be opened |
Package shown as a folder | Re-save as one file in Pages |
Convert Pages to Word
Someone on a Mac sent you a .pages document and Windows has no idea what to do with it. Apple never shipped Pages for Windows and never published the format, so there is no plug-in to install and no viewer to download — which is why an online conversion is usually the fastest way out. This tool hands the document to LibreOffice, which reads Apple's iWork formats through an open-source library called libetonyek, and gives you back an editable .docx.
A .pages file is not really a file
It helps to know what you are holding. In the iWork '09 era a Pages document was a package: a genuine folder containing a gzipped XML file with the text, a Data subdirectory for the images, and often a Preview.pdf thumbnail. macOS presents such folders as single items, so on a Mac it behaves like a file and nowhere else does. From 2013 onwards Pages switched to a single compressed container whose contents are stored as binary archives rather than readable XML — smaller, faster for Apple, and considerably harder for anyone else to decode.
Two generations, two different outcomes
That split matters more than anything else on this page. The older XML-based documents have been readable by open-source software for well over a decade and convert thoroughly. The newer binary generation is supported too, but the coverage is narrower, and a complex modern document can come back with its words present and its arrangement approximate. Nothing about your particular file tells you in advance which side of the line it sits on, so the practical approach is to try it and look at what you get.
Things Pages does that Word has no word for
- Smart shapes and masked images.Apple's shape and image-masking features have no Office counterpart, so they are approximated with ordinary drawings and cropped pictures.
- Linked text boxes. Pages can flow text from one box into the next; Word manages this differently and the chain does not always survive.
- Apple system fonts. Fonts like SF Pro are not licensed for redistribution and will not be on a Windows machine, so substitutes are used and spacing shifts slightly.
- Templates. The decorative furniture of an Apple template converts as plain content, not as a reusable Word theme.
Why your Mac document is processed on our server
No browser can read iWork. The format is undocumented, the modern variant stores its content as compressed binary structures with no published schema, and the only general-purpose reader that exists is a C++ library compiled into desktop office software. Running that means running a real office process, so your document is transferred over an encrypted connection to a headless LibreOffice here. Everything it touches — your .pages upload, the intermediate files, the finished .docx — lives in a folder created for that one request and destroyed the instant the response is complete, including when the conversion fails.
Other Apple files, and what comes next
If you only need to read or print the document rather than edit it, Pages to PDF is the cleaner choice, because it avoids the layout approximation entirely. Numbers spreadsheets go through Numbers to XLSX, and a Keynote deck through Keynote to PDF. Once you have the Word file, Word to PDF will fix its layout for sending on.
Frequently Asked Questions
Windows shows my .pages document as a folder. What do I do?
You have a package rather than a single file. Older versions of Pages saved documents as a directory of parts that macOS displays as though it were one item; copy that onto Windows and the illusion disappears, leaving you a folder full of pieces with nothing to upload. The fix has to happen on a Mac: open the document in Pages and save it again, since current versions write one self-contained file. If no Mac is available, look inside the folder for a Preview.pdf — old Pages packages often include one, and it will at least let you read the contents.
How good is the result, really?
Text, headings, lists, tables, footnotes and images are dependable. Precise typography is not. Pages leans on Apple's system fonts and its own layout engine, and neither is available to the converter, so line breaks move and a document that filled exactly two pages on a Mac may run to two and a bit in Word. Treat the output as an editable document you will tidy, rather than a pixel-perfect copy.
Why does one Pages file convert beautifully and another comes out sparse?
Pages changed its internal format completely in 2013. Documents from the iWork '09 era store their content as XML, which the open-source importer reads very thoroughly. Everything since packs its content into compressed binary archives, and support for that generation is real but less complete. If a newer document converts poorly, the reliable route is to open it in Pages — on a Mac or through iCloud in a browser — and use Export To, Word.
My document is mostly text boxes and it converted strangely.
That sounds like a page-layout document rather than a word-processing one. Pages offers both: the first has no flowing body text at all and treats every block of writing as an independent floating object. Word has no equivalent mode, so those blocks arrive as text boxes scattered across the page. It opens and it is editable, but a newsletter or poster built that way is usually easier to rebuild than to repair.
Can it open a password-protected Pages document?
No. The contents are encrypted and there is no field here to supply a password, so the job simply fails. Remove the protection in Pages first, under File and then Set Password, and upload the unprotected copy.
Is it really free, and how large a document can I send?
Free, with no account and no mark left on the Word file. Each document may be up to 100 MB — worth knowing, because Pages files carrying full-resolution photographs get large quickly.