How to Convert PDF to iWork Pages on Mac OS X

Apple’s iWork Pages is free on the Mac App Store for qualifying Mac computers purchased on or after October 1, 2013. You may also switch from Microsoft Office to iWork on Mac OS X. This tutorial will show you how to convert PDF to Pages, so you can easily modify the content in this elegant word processor on Mac OS X.

With Lighten PDF to Pages Converter, you can get started quickly in 3 simple steps:

1. Add PDF files
Simply drag and drop the PDF files you want to convert into the app, or click the ‘Add Files’ button to browse your finder. You can add as many PDF files as you want at one time.

2. Select a folder to store the output .pages files
3. Click ‘Convert’ button.
Conversion will start instantly, you’ll get the output file in seconds. Open the folder you just selected, or simply click on the hyperlink in ‘Statu’ column to open the pages file directly.

Advanced conversion skill

Besides the 3 simple steps above, here are some tricks to enhance your output quality.

1. Select the output options
There are two output options available in ‘Setting’.

(1) Make image selectable, format all text content with text boxes

Text contents, images, and columns will be converted in text boxes, so you can easily move the text boxes to anywhere you want. Text boxes can retain the original formatting better than the following options. And image will be easily selected since they are flowing above the pages.

This is recommended if your PDF file has complex layouts, or you just want to modify some certain words, images instead of the whole document.

(2) Background image unselectable, format text content without text boxes

The text will not be placed in text boxes, so you can select all text of the whole document, and change the formatting directly, this is suitable when you want to edit a large scale of contents. The image will be treated as background, so you can’t select them directly, especially in the latest version Pages version 5.2.2. If you open the output file in Pages version 4 or former version, you can open the ‘Format’ panel, select ‘ background image selectable’, then you can select the image.

2. Advanced table conversion function
If you find table data in PDF file, this function will help you improve the output quality effectively. It will detect the table automatically during the conversion. If the output file is too complex and the output is not correct, you can still mark table areas yourself, add lines of columns and rows, merge or split cells for better accuracy. Please check this tutorial for more detail of the table conversion.

Note: This app doesn’t have OCR function, so when it comes across scanned PDF or image-only PDF files, contents will be converted as an image in output pages instead of editable contents.

If you make changes to the output file in Pages 5, say the latest version 5.2.2, the pages file can’t be opened in the former versions, such as Pages version 4 (Pages 09).