Pages and Keynote are broken on MacBook Pro after upgrading to Catalina

It's good news that the apps do show up as previous purchases.

Before we dive into reinstalling the OS or upgrading, etc, I'd like you to try restarting the Mac in safe mode as a troubleshooting step. It's very safe and not very difficult.

How to use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support 

❝Start up your Intel-based Mac in safe mode

1. Turn on or restart your Mac, then immediately press and hold the Shift key until you see the login window.
2. Log in to your Mac.
3. You might be asked to log in again.
4. On either the first or second login window, you should see “Safe Boot” in the menu bar.❞

Safe mode will often correct weird software behavior by forcing the OS to clear caches, do disk repair and other housekeeping and temporarily disables third-party mods.

Launch Pages and Keynote while booted in safe mode.

Do the apps still crash immediately?

You can exit safe mode by restarting your Mac normally, then reevaluate the problem.

Open the App Store, sign in and then click on your account icon at the bottom of the sidebar.

You should now have access to your previous Purchases and the Pages and Keynote apps should be there for you to download again. Redownload apps and games from Apple - Apple Support

Mac OS Sierra was released in 2016 and received its last revision update in 2017, eight years ago. Since then there have been eight (!) major revisions to the OS. In fact, your MacBook Pro can run macOS 11 Big Sur which is one version newer than Catalina.

For several years before macOS Catalina was released in 2019, Apple did warn users and developers that major changes to the OS were coming and that older applications would no longer work under the modern OS.

Yes, it is possible to reinstall an older version of the OS. If going backward, Mojave would be the recommended version. It will require that you erase your startup drive, reinstall the OS and then reinstall your user files and data from a backup. You do have a backup, don't you? Back up your Mac with Time Machine - Apple Support

I'd recommend that instead of going backward, you make that final upgrade to Big Sur so you can get the most life out of the old MBP before you have to replace it. And you should probably start to make plans for that, seeing that the computer is twelve years old by now.

This post is cross-posted in the Pages Community where it has been addressed. The OP had Apple applications presinstalled at purchase, so no obtaining last compatible versions for Catalina. Older versions of these applications for Sierra or Mojave are crashing on Catalina.

Are you running any sort of anti-virus, optimizing, clean-up or VPN apps? These will often interfere with the operation of the OS and cause problems. If you have any of these, disable or, better yet, uninstall them and restart the computer.

At this point, I would uninstall Pages and Keynote. You can then re-download them from the App Store. It may simply be that the earlier version(s) you carried over during your upgrade may be damaged. Reinstalling them after a fresh download is likely to solve this problem.

The apps can be uninstalled by dragging them from the Applications folder to the trash. Then empty the trash, restart the Mac and visit the App Store to download them again.

muesli_usa wrote:

Hi,

[...]

Wouldn't it be dangerous to uninstall these Apps (Pages and Keynote) when afterwards I cannot download a version from the App Store that runs on Catalina?

Not at all. You cannot download a fresh copy if the app is already installed on the Mac, as they now are. This is why you see "Open" next to each app in the App Store today. If you delete them, the App Store offer will change to "Get" and you can download a fresh copy.

Besides, you also have a copy of those problematic apps on your Time Machine backup drive. You can always recover them from there if need be - though they would likely continue to misfire.

maybe you can use the icloud Pages: https://www.icloud.com/pages/, i use it very often.