.PAGES

Introduction

A .pages file is a document from Apple Pages, the word processor in Apple’s iWork suite, first released in 2005. It holds both word processing documents and page layout documents such as posters and newsletters. Apple has never published the format, so other programs open it only partly, and most people exchange Pages documents by exporting them to DOCX or PDF.

Structure

Since the 2013 versions of iWork, a Pages document is a ZIP archive (or, on older setups, a macOS package folder) holding an Index folder of .iwa files, the pictures in Data, a Metadata folder and preview images. IWA files hold the document as Protocol Buffers messages, compressed with a variant of Snappy framing. Versions before 2013 stored the document as XML instead.

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