How to open .PAGES files (Apple Pages documents) on Android, Windows and Linux

A friend with an iPhone sends a letter as Letter.pages, or a club treasurer shares the accounts as Budget 2026.numbers. Word and Excel don’t recognise them, and there’s no Apple app for Android, Windows or Linux that opens them.

Folders shows the preview picture that Pages and Numbers save inside their files, usually the first page or sheet, on Android, Windows and Linux. That’s enough to see what you’ve been sent. To read every page or edit it, open it at iCloud.com or ask for a Word, Excel or PDF copy.

What is a .PAGES file?

Pages is Apple’s word processor and page layout app, and Numbers is its spreadsheet app. Together with Keynote for presentations they make up iWork, which comes free on Apple devices. That’s why these files are so common among iPhone and iPad users, who may not realise that other people can’t open them.

Extension	What it is
.pages	A Pages document: letters, reports, CVs, flyers, books
.numbers	A Numbers spreadsheet: tables and charts placed freely on sheets

Inside, current Pages and Numbers files are packages of Apple’s own IWA files (iWork Archive, a compressed binary format Apple doesn’t document), the pictures used in the document, and a few preview images: preview.jpg at a decent size, plus smaller preview-web.jpg and preview-micro.jpg. Older documents from the iWork ’09 generation use XML instead and keep a thumbnail in a QuickLook folder.

Numbers works differently from Excel: a sheet is a canvas that can hold several separate tables and charts, rather than one big grid. That matters when you convert, as you’ll see below.

How to open a .PAGES file with Folders

On Android

1. Download Folders from the download section and install it (Android 7.0 or newer).
2. Open it and allow All files access.
3. Save the attachment, then find it in Download, or type .pages or .numbers into the search box.
4. Tap it.

Or tap the file in WhatsApp, Gmail or your cloud drive and choose Open with → Folders.

On Windows and Linux

1. Install Folders on Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit) or Linux.
2. Double-click the file in Folders.
3. On Windows, File Explorer also offers it: right-click the file, then Open with → Folders. The installer adds Folders to that menu for Pages and Numbers files.

What you can do with it in Folders

Folders opens Pages and Numbers files in its design preview viewer, because the preview picture is the part of these files it can read:

• See the preview: usually the first page of a Pages document or the first sheet of a Numbers spreadsheet, as it looked when last saved. It’s a picture, so the text can’t be selected or searched, and other pages and sheets aren’t included.
• Details lists the file’s name, size and date, and whether the file is from current iWork or the older iWork ’09.
• Share it on, for example to someone who can export it for you.

If the file was saved without a preview, Folders says No preview to show.

Folders’ document and spreadsheet editors don’t read Apple’s formats. Once you have a Word or Excel copy, though, they do: you can read and edit a DOCX file or an XLSX spreadsheet in Folders.

Other ways to open .PAGES files

• iCloud.com: Pages and Numbers run in a desktop web browser on any system, free with an Apple Account. You can read, edit and download a copy as Word, Excel or PDF.
• Ask for an export. Pages and Numbers both have an Export option: Pages to Word, PDF or EPUB, Numbers to Excel, CSV or PDF. It takes the sender a few taps.
• LibreOffice (free) can import many Pages and Numbers files, though layouts often shift.

Problems opening a .PAGES file?

• Word or Excel says the file can’t be read. It’s an Apple format, not a damaged Office file. Use one of the routes above.
• You see a folder called something like Report.pages. Some Pages and Numbers documents are stored as a folder (a package) rather than a single file, and that’s how they look when copied to a USB stick or a non-Apple drive. Ask the sender to export the document instead.
• There’s no preview. The document was saved without one. iCloud.com or an export will still show the content.
• An exported spreadsheet looks rearranged. Because a Numbers sheet can hold several tables, the Excel export usually puts each table on a worksheet of its own. Check every tab, not just the first.

Questions people ask

Can I open a .pages file on Windows? Yes: open it at iCloud.com in a browser, ask for a Word or PDF export, or see its first-page preview in Folders.

Can I open a .numbers file on Android? Folders shows the preview of its first sheet. To work with the numbers, ask for an Excel or CSV export, which Folders’ spreadsheet editor opens.

How do I convert Pages to Word or PDF? Use Export in Pages, or open the file at iCloud.com and download a copy as Word or PDF. Folders doesn’t convert Pages or Numbers files.

.pages vs .docx: what’s the difference? Both are word processor documents. .docx is Microsoft Word’s openly documented format that almost every app reads; .pages is Apple’s own, which mainly Apple’s apps read.

Related guides: how to open DOCX files and how to open XLSX spreadsheets. Or browse all 382 file types Folders opens.