Are .pages files able to be opened?

Using Version: 5.1.2.2 How can I open a .pages document

Support for iWork '09 and older files (Pages / Numbers) was enabled in v5.0.

Thanks - what am I missing since it doesn’t work properly - do I need to add something to the LO install?

That will depend on your platform / install. Ubuntu packages LO differently in their variant. For general DEB/RPM packaging be sure to install all packages. Under MacOS / Windows everything is included.

Can you be more detailed about what you are expecting to happen and what happens instead please?