Converting Pages document to Word document as requested by publisher

The consistently long standing recommendation in this Pages community is to use the word processing application that the consumer of your document is using (e.g. Microsoft Word users on Mac or Windows). That way, you are sending and receiving the document in its native document format without the risks of translation introduced by Pages when both opening and then exporting back to Word.

Whether it is a Microsoft 365 subscription, or the single-purchase Office 2021/2024 for Mac, Word can open the Word document you exported from Pages, potentially with manageable edits where necessary, or a Word document sent from your publisher. I don't see you retyping it.

By using Microsoft Word on macOS, your are exchanging Word documents in their native document format, not as approximate translations from Pages. You can even enable embedding fonts in your saved Word documents from Microsoft Word, where Pages only uses font references that the receiving Word may perform font substitution.

Viking OSX is right. Simply buy MS Word for Mac, either by subscription or single purchase, and use that. I used to use Pages for writing books, transferring to MS Word in the later stages of the project. Recently, however, a project of mine wouldn't convert properly. It was riddled with problems that I had to manually correct one-by-one. Never again!

> My alternatives include:

> 1.) Invest in a less expensive Windows computer with Word installed and retype the whole thing to ensure a perfect representation of the text and formatting.

> 2.) Download LibreOffice and convert. But I've heard I might experience unexpected deviations in formatting.

> 3.) Invest in Word for Mac for my iMac, but I'd still have to retype the whole thing.

4: None of the above. Or maybe 3.5 - Invest in Word for Mac and import your Pages document, marking up/editing as necessary (for the things that don't transfer 100%), then submit your document to the publisher. No (or, at least, minimal) retyping involved

While there is good compatibility between Pages and Word, they are different beasts and not everything transfers perfectly (e.g. there are some features in each app that just don't exist in the other, so some compromises need to be made).

To be fair, your description sounds pretty straightforward, with the only thing that raises a (red? orange? yellow?) flag is the footnotes - they could be 'end of page', 'end of section', or 'end of document', and since I rarely use them I don't know how either a) Pages exports them, or b) Word imports them.

That said, it shouldn't prevent your publisher from opening the document. It just doesn't sound like they even tried.

Either way, with a copy of Word for Mac, you can transfer the document yourself, verify/validate the conversion, and then send it on to your publisher. Still no need for a mass-rewrite.

Why do they say they cannot open the file? I’ve never had issues exporting to Word.

i suppose that you could install Word and open your converted file. No new typing needed.