Saving a document in Pages

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I’ve migrated my Word for Mac 2004 documents from an MBP OS 10.6.8 to a new MBP with OS 10.10.2. The latter is, of course, equipped with Pages and my Word documents can be read and edited by Pages.

However, when I edit a document, say, “MyBook”, and go to SAVE, Pages is asking me where I want to save it. Well, all I want to do is save the changes that I’ve just made and leave “MyBook” where it was in on the HD in the appropriate Documents folder. But Pages seems to want to create a new version with a new file name. Surely this can’t be right – by the time “MyBook” has been finished there would be countless thousands of versions.

How can I get Pages to do the kind of saves that I’m familiar with in Word?

Thanks in advance.

M
 

chscag

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I'm assuming you wish to save your Word documents that you edited with Pages as DOC or DOCX? If you don't use the drop down option, Pages will save the document in its native format *.pages.

Go to the top menu File, click on File, then click on "Export to". From there you can choose Word format.
 
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Thanks for your prompt reply.

As you will know, I cannot use my Word for Mac 2004 with the new MBP.

I’d be happy to leave the documents in the Pages format. Anyway, I carried out a minor test edit and used the “export to” option. However, the document in Pages has not changed. I can see a new document in Documents but I’m up against the same problem: it seems that each time I do an edit I’m going to get a new file. But I all want to do is update my main file with each edit. With Word, I'm used to saving as I write - usually every five minutes or so with a click on the Save icon at the top.

If necessary, I’ll buy a new version of Word but was hoping that I might be able to soldier on with Pages.

M
 

chscag

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Unfortunately, there is no way to keep the Word format and do a "save as" in Pages. You have to do the export each time. Don't buy Mac Word 2011 (Office 2011) as it will cost around $95 discounted and it will soon be replaced. Microsoft is releasing the public beta of Mac Office 2015 in supposedly the first half of this year. (If you can believe MS.) It will be free to use as the beta. Mac Office 2015 will be released in the second half of the year but will cost $$$.

In the meantime, why don't you download the free "Bean" application which is MS Word compatible and will save in the Word format as you're used to doing. Download the free Bean from here. If that doesn't work for you, download Open Office or LibreOffice (both free and MS Word compatible)

BTW, nothing wrong with using Pages. It's a nice word processor and layout program as long as you do not need to maintain MS Word compatibility.
 
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Thanks again “chscag" for your help and advice regarding MS Word.

It doesn't seem possible to buy Word on its own and I wouldn't need the other components. However, it does seem that I can do everything with Pages.

There are hundreds (thousands?) of Word 2004 files in Documents and I can read these via Pages. However, there are also some very old ones in Word 98 that will not open: these I have to open with Text Editor and, if necessary, then copy them into Pages.

If I need to edit an old Word 2004 document, I save the Pages version to the desktop and then delete the old Word (.doc) from Documents and replace it with the Pages version. Is this the best way?

I have also created a PDF from Pages. Pages Help suggests that this be done via Print (as with Word 2004) but it also seems to be possible to use “Export To” in the File menu. I have never been able to edit PDFs and wonder whether this will now be possible via Pages or some work-around.

It would be interesting to get tips and snags from anyone who is in this hybrid ‘Word-Pages’ situation.

M
 

chscag

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If I need to edit an old Word 2004 document, I save the Pages version to the desktop and then delete the old Word (.doc) from Documents and replace it with the Pages version. Is this the best way?

As long as you don't need to maintain Word format compatibility, yes that will work.

I have also created a PDF from Pages. Pages Help suggests that this be done via Print (as with Word 2004) but it also seems to be possible to use “Export To” in the File menu. I have never been able to edit PDFs and wonder whether this will now be possible via Pages or some work-around.

You can do some basic editing of a PDF file by using your "Preview" app that you already have. Neither Pages nor Word can open or edit a PDF file.
 

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