Key Takeaways
For a company with a reputation for walled garden ecosystems and device-exclusive features, Apple Pages is surprisingly collaborative. Here’s how you can share a document with virtually anyone, both in read-only and editable formats.
Collaborate on Pages Documents with Anyone
Apple’s word processor has collaborative sharing features built-in. This means you can work on a Pages document with other users, in real-time, and they don’t even need an Apple Account (previously Apple ID) in order to take part.
To do this, open (or create) a document that you want to share with someone else. Now hit the “Share” button at the top of the screen and you’ll be prompted to save your document if you haven’t already done so.
You can now choose between “Send Copy” and “Collaborate” in the sharing box. Select “Collaborate” and further refine your options using the “Only invited people can edit” button. From here you can choose to between sharing with specific people (which requires a login) or anyone with a link (which does not).
You can also choose to allow editing (“Can make changes”) and read-only (“View only”) sharing modes.
If you’re sharing with other users who already have an Apple Account, it makes sense to share the document with them directly. If you attempt to share this way with a user who doesn’t have an Apple Account, say by selecting the “Mail” share option and inputting their email address manually, they’ll see the following page:
To view or edit your document, they’ll need to log in with an existing Apple Account or create one for free. This is a short process, but it requires verifying with a phone number, and not everyone can be bothered with that.
A better option, assuming you trust the person you’re sharing with, is to pick “Anyone with a link” instead. You can even apply full editing privileges when you do this. From here, copy the link and paste it into an email, a new message, or any other way you want to share your document.
Anyone joining from your link will be invited to provide their name, after which they’ll be able to view the document and even make changes. Any changes they make will be linked to their name in the “Track Changes” summary. This is at odds with the way sharing works in Apple Notes, where an account is always required.
If your collaborator closes the document and wants to edit it again later, they’ll need to use the same link and the same name to ensure that changes are tracked correctly.
If you no longer want to share your document, you can revoke access using the “Collaboration” sharing interface at the top of the screen. This makes it easy to remove people you have invited using the list of collaborators.
But if you’ve shared a link, you’ll need to use the “Stop Sharing” button to take the link offline. Anyone currently editing the document will be interrupted as see an error like this:
You can now repeat the process again to generate a new link (the old link will stop working permanently). This is handy if you’re worried that the link has fallen into the wrong hands.
If an unknown party causes damage to your document, use the File > Revert To option on a Mac to browse previously saved versions of a document.
Export Pages Documents to Common Formats
Alternatively, you can always export your document to a common document format. If you choose to “Share” and then “Send a Copy” you’ll end up sharing the Pages file, which is a format that other word processors might not be able to open.
To play it safe, use the File > Export (or tap the “…” ellipsis button on an iPhone or iPad and select “Export”) to choose another format. Word (DOCX) and rich text (RTF) are the two most logical choices here. Keep in mind that some formatting issues may occur when exporting to such formats.
If you’re keen to pass a document back and forth to make changes, using collaboration as described above (even just via a link) is a much better choice since you’ll reduce the chance of formatting issues messing up your document.
You should avoid formats like PDF, EPUB, Images, and Plain Text since these will either be read-only, literal image files, or ignore all formatting. If you find yourself editing a lot of Word files, you might find that Word is a better choice than Pages.
Give Pages Another Shot
Pages is a solid word processor that’s worth a revisit if you haven’t tried it for a while. These collaborative features are just one reason to give it another chance.