Since installing Mavericks on my MacBook Pro, I have many (not all) documents that cannot be opened in either Pages '09 or Pages 5. They show on my doc lists, but are greyed out so I can't try to change extensions or anything else. Some are PDFs.

Question

Since installing Mavericks on my MacBook Pro, I have many documents, but not all, that cannot be opened in either Pages 5 or in Pages '09.  The names show in my document lists, but are greyed out.  They do not show any extensions, but I'm sure at seast some of them are PDFs.  As I cannot open them, I am unable to try to experiment with any solutions - I am not tech savvy, but can sometimes fix things by trial and error.  I have no issues with sharing documents as I have no other devices.  I just want to be able to open my saved documents!  Also, the documents I can open have to be persistently coaxed to open to a point that it is extremely aggravating.  I am not so happy with this recent "upgrade."  Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

You use Finder to find stuff. It is what you use to look at where your files are kept and to rename, move or trash them. If you double click on a file in Finder it finds the right software to open it for you.
To open particular files you use the right software for each type. Usually, but not always, the software that made the file.
Pages opens files ending in .pages. Also .txt, .rtf, and doc.
Pages 5 is the latest (but certainly not the greatest) version of Pages. It has trouble opening all sorts of files including the older Pages '09 files but it will still do it.
Unfortunately Apple has chosen for Pages 5 to also save its files as exactly the same file extension .pages despite it being a different format that can not be opened by the older Pages '09.
As we all know Apple is wise and great beyond belief and would not do something that on the face of it looks extraordinarily stupid and shortsighted. Therefore we know that it must be our fault and we are not holding the software right. Because we are bad users, we must be punished, by either having to use Pages 5 or jump through hoops to avoid using Pages 5.
If you have installed Pages 5 any .pages file (old or new) will be opened by Pages 5. If you then save the file, Pages 5 will change the file format. So don't open your files with Pages 5 and don't save them if you do.
To stop Pages 5 opening and resaving your old files, you need to drag it to the trash and empty it.
When it is no longer around to annoy you, you can go back to using Pages 09.
Peter