Unable to attach iWorks’ Pages document ?
Have you noticed that attaching a .pages document created from iWork’s Pages to a web based mail account, such as gmail. or yahoo mail never works ?
Well, you can stop trying. I did 
Here’s the reason: a pages document is not actually a regular file. It’s actually a “package”, a special kind of folder that appears as a single file when you look at it in finder. You can verify this by right clicking the pages document and then selecting “show package content” from the menu. It will show you the actual content of the pages “file”.
Since you can’t actually send a folder structure, or at least I haven’t seen an email client that can do that other than Apple Mail, then sending the pages “package” camouflaged as a file will not work.
If you use Apple Mail, it will automatically zip the files and send it, which is why attaching a pages document through Apple Mail works.
For all other clients a simple workaround is to compress the file into a zip file (right click the file and choose compress in leopard) and send the zip files. This works every time.
October 30th, 2008 at 10:00 am
I usually say print -> PDF and then send the PDF. Works on all email accounts and platform independent too, can be opened in any OS with PDF Reader, even on some web based email can convert on the fly to HTML.
October 30th, 2008 at 11:28 am
Yup, that’ll work too if you don’t need the recipients to work on that same pages document.
November 3rd, 2008 at 4:54 pm
ohh.. now i know, well.. it took half of my day trying this impossible task
is it a bug? What do u think?
Anyway, thanks for d’explanation!
November 4th, 2008 at 10:40 am
Hi Beng:
I don’t think it’s a bug, not at least from the point of view of the developers. They know about this and chose not to “fix” it apparently. Perhaps it’s a lot more complicated for them to modify the code to embed everything in one file rather than using the “package” format.
I think they should make it work, though, because it is counter intuitive and who knows how many people have gone through the same agony trying to attach pages document using their mail clients other than apple mail.