HELP!! New hard drive. Need to download pages.

My taxes are coming due on October 15th. My computer crashed recently and now I have a new hard drive. I need to access information from some old tax forms on my computer but I don't have any applications to open them. The application I had on this computer before for creating documents was Pages, but I will download anything that will open the tax form, which was created with Turbotax. I am not a techie.
I tried to download a trial version of pages, but it did not work. And when I go to download Pages it takes me to Mountain Lion. Is that the updated version of Pages. I notice on the Apple site they call it an "Upgrade." I don't have anything at all. I need the application, not just an upgrade.
Can anyone give me some advice?

What is the file type of the document you want to open? Turbotax saves most of tax forms as a pdf. Should be able to just click on it and open it.

If you don't know the file type, right click on the file and select 'Get Info'.

I definitely can't click on it and open it. I tried to open it with an application called "TextEdit" but that didn't work. When I look up the info.about the file, under "Kind" it says "Document". Does that help? Thanks.

Under "Name and extension", what is the extension for the file?

What Mac model do you own? What version of OSX did it come with? Did you purchase Pages in the past?

There is nothing after "Name and Extension". It is blank.
My Mac is Mac OS X 10.6.3
If I recall, Pages came with the Mac when it was purchased.
Have I answered your questions?

I appreciate the help.

Did your Mac come with an OSX Restore DVD? It should have since you have 10.6 Snow Leopard. All the Software that came with your Mac should be on those DVD's and you can reinstall Pages from there.

Is 10.6 Snow Leopard the same thing as Pages? Unfortunately, I can't find the software that came with the computer.

No, 10.6 is Snow Leopard, it's the Operating system, but on one of the DVD's came iWork if it was installed when you bought the machine.

Is there anything else I can do? I really need the information on those tax returns.

Suggest you try putting the old drive in an external case, attach by USB and see what is available. No use now telling you to always have a backup.

TurboTax forms and 1040s are printed as PDF files. Same with H&R Block tax returns. But if I'm remembering correctly, Intuit saves the tax files in a proprietary format. Go to the Intuit site and download a trial version or preview version of TurboTax for Mac and use it to open your files.

Just out of curiosity - did you double click on the file - just to make sure Preview can't open them, on the off chance they are pdfs? I always make sure I save a .pdf version of each year's turbotax file. If not - then I would definitely follow chscag's advice.

chscag, I'll give it a try, but I downloaded Turbotax 2011 to my computer after I received the new hard drive, so what's the difference? Shouldn't the software I downloaded help me open the old tax returns?
Brian, yep, I've double clicked. No luck.

I'm fairly certain that Pages or MS Word can not open TTax files. You're going to need a copy of TurboTax for 2011 or 2012 Preview version in order to open those files. The new version of Turbo Tax will be able to open last year's returns since those are the same files used to update this year's return.

Let us know.

Just for the record, only reason I tried to help with pages is the OP's first thread seemed to indicate he used Pages before and did not have it now.

I agree that if it's truly a Turbo Tax file Pages is not going to do much with it.

I have a copy of TT 2011. I downloaded it after I got my new hard drive, but I still can't open the previous TT tax returns.

That's strange. I have always been able to open the previous years returns with the current year TTax program. What kind of files are we talking about here? I was assuming the files are what TTax defaults to when compiling your 1040.

Are these files that were imported from Excel or Quicken?

What is the filename extension on those files?

Also how old are those files? You sure you made them in Turbo Tax?

Like Chscag asked, did you export to Excel or Quicken?

I used to be able to open my old TT returns too. I have not been able to do so since I got a new hard drive. I did not export them from Exel or Quicken. The TT returns I want to open are 1 and 2 years old. Under file exension, it says:.tax2010
In addition, I transfered the data from my TT 2010 into 2011, and I can find the 2010 info nowhere within 2011. Could the past TT returns have been corrupted when transfered from the old hard drive?