Pages to PDF Converter

Pages is the word processor that comes free with every Mac, iPad and iPhone, and it saves in its own format with the .pages extension. Inside Apple's world that is never a problem. Outside it, it is: Windows, Android phones, Chromebooks and Microsoft Word cannot open a .pages file, and the file often shows up as an unknown type with no preview.

That is how most people land here. A teacher shares a worksheet written on an iPad, a landlord sends a lease typed on a MacBook, a classmate hands in group notes, and the attachment refuses to open. Converting it to PDF gives you a document you can read and print on whatever you have, without asking the sender to do anything again.

The PDF keeps the text, headings, pictures, tables and page layout of the document. Because Apple does not publish the file format, very elaborate layouts may differ slightly from what the sender sees, which is why the panel below also explains how to get a PDF straight from Pages when the copy has to be exact.

Which route is best depends on who has the file and what device they use. If you have the .pages file but no Apple device, this page is the quickest. If the person who wrote it is at hand, Pages can export a PDF itself, as described in Apple's Pages guide.

Asking the sender is not always practical. They may be away, the file may be old, or there may be dozens of documents to get through, such as a folder of school handouts. In those cases converting the files you already have is faster than waiting for new exports, and the results are close enough for reading and printing.

The same converter reads Word, PowerPoint, Excel, OpenDocument, EPUB and text files, as listed above. That helps when a document from a Mac arrives together with other attachments: drop them all in one batch and you get a PDF of each. Keynote presentations from Apple's slide app are on the list too.

Every file in a batch shares the same page settings, so if some documents use Letter and others A4, either convert them in two groups or keep Page size on Same as source, which uses each document's own paper size.

If you need to edit rather than read a document, a PDF is the wrong target. Turning the .pages file into a Word document keeps the text editable on Windows, and the Document Converter page does that from the same upload.

This page starts on Letter, the paper size that Pages uses for new documents in the United States. Documents written in Europe, Asia or Australia are usually A4 instead. If the PDF has large empty strips at the bottom or text running close to the edge, change Page size and convert again.

A few other options are worth knowing. Remove metadata drops the author name stored in the document, Open password under Security protects a private letter or lease, and PDF/A makes an archival copy for records you must keep. To join several converted documents into one file, use Merge PDF afterwards; for other document types, see Convert to PDF.