can word documents be transferred to pages so they are usable?

Pages can normally open Word docs without problem. But if you are routinely sending docs to people who use Word, I recommend you use Word yourself to avoid possibly annoying format changes when translating between Pages and Word formats.

Ibid, Tom Gewecke

The advise to use the current MS Word, so that you may continue to open/edit/save those Word documents in their native format, and without translation, may cost recover MS Office. Otherwise, you may suffer potential productivity loss at the whims of the Pages open and export translation process — that Apple does not guarantee any accuracy.