I always sign In to the document with either touch or Face ID. Apple are now refusing both and asking me to enter my password. It has been that long you've accepted the other formats I have no idea what the password is. How can I gain access to my information.
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
MacBook Pro 13″
When you place a password on a document and during that process tell Keychain to remember it, then as long as that document is located in your account on that Mac, Pages will ask Keychain to resolve that password, and the document just opens when you access it. Move that document out of your account or off of your Mac and there won't be any Keychain to help Pages resolve the password.
If that document that won't open remains in the same account on your Mac and it was "remembered" in Keychain at the time of the password creation, then provided you have admin privileges, you may be able to get the password revealed.
Click on your Desktop and press shift+cmd+U to open the Utilities folder. Double-click the Keychain Access application and select Open Keychain Access. You will be presented with a default long list of entries. Scroll down looking for the name of your Pages document that you have no access to. If you don't see it, then Quit Keychain Access and there is no hope of finding the password.
If you do see a line in Keychain access with the name of the Pages document, select the line, right-click on it, and choose Get Info. A new dialog will appear and at the bottom of it, you will see an unchecked box with the name Show password. Select it. This will open a password challenge that wants your admin password. The blue Allow button will light and you press return. Now your document password will be shown in that Show password field.
When you place a password on a document and during that process tell Keychain to remember it, then as long as that document is located in your account on that Mac, Pages will ask Keychain to resolve that password, and the document just opens when you access it. Move that document out of your account or off of your Mac and there won't be any Keychain to help Pages resolve the password.
If that document that won't open remains in the same account on your Mac and it was "remembered" in Keychain at the time of the password creation, then provided you have admin privileges, you may be able to get the password revealed.
Click on your Desktop and press shift+cmd+U to open the Utilities folder. Double-click the Keychain Access application and select Open Keychain Access. You will be presented with a default long list of entries. Scroll down looking for the name of your Pages document that you have no access to. If you don't see it, then Quit Keychain Access and there is no hope of finding the password.
If you do see a line in Keychain access with the name of the Pages document, select the line, right-click on it, and choose Get Info. A new dialog will appear and at the bottom of it, you will see an unchecked box with the name Show password. Select it. This will open a password challenge that wants your admin password. The blue Allow button will light and you press return. Now your document password will be shown in that Show password field.
When you are on a Mac and use Pages File menu : Set Password, there is a critical check box on that password panel: Remember this password in my keychain. Failing to check that means your are entirely at the mercy of your memory. If you do check that box, when you open a document in Pages on the same user account, same Mac, Pages will poke the Keychain Manager and if there is a password for that document, it is automatically applied and the document opens without any user interaction.
Take that Pages document elsewhere and there is no macOS KeyChain manager for Pages to query and your ability to recall that document password is entirely on your memory, or written list of passwords.
A Pages document that is password protected and you cannot provide the password is a permanent enigma with no opening recourse from Apple or your fellow users.
If Face ID is set up and otherwise working here, then you’re not going to like the answer.
Without the password that was set when the document was protected, the information in the document is inaccessible.
Password-protect a Pages document on iPad - Apple Support
The good news: passwords work.
The bad news: passwords work.
Regards,
Ian.
+1.
Can anyone answer as to WHY a password is suddenly being asked for after YEARS of just opening the document using face id? Is there an answer?
Face ID is a shortcut for the password, and not a replacement.
What happened here to lose the mapping from Face ID to password to access, I doubt anybody knows.
How do I regain access to a password protected Pages document without the password?
