Update on my findings: I’ve come to the conclusion that comments in iWork documents are simply not scriptable or accessible via AppleScript or ScriptingBridge. I’m now working with a different approach using placeholders. In Numbers, I can manipulate the content as expected, though placeholders are less convenient than comments. For Pages, I also managed to use placeholders, but it caused me to lose all styles because I had to switch to plain text. My strategy to keep all style is to perform a simple find/replace on my placeholders within the body text. For images, I use the "description" field intended for VoiceOver. Again, not the most elegant solution, but it works. However, I’m stuck on one issue: when my placeholders span multiple paragraphs, I can’t find a way to remove the content between them without losing styles. Does anyone have an idea on how to delete content placed between two placeholders, even across multiple paragraphs, while preserving styles? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Could be useful for someone, here's an example of script for Numbers to manipulate the content, cells and rows with placeholders: set newList to {} repeat with anItem in theList set newList to {anItem} & newList end repeat return newList end reverseList on replaceText(theText, searchString, replacementString) set AppleScript's text item delimiters to searchString set textItems to text items of theText set AppleScript's text item delimiters to replacementString set newText to textItems as text set AppleScript's text item delimiters to "" return newText end replaceText tell application "Numbers" tell document "TestNum" repeat with s in sheets tell s repeat with t in tables -- Create a static list of row indices set totalRows to count of rows of t set rowIndices to {} repeat with i from 1 to totalRows copy i to end of rowIndices end repeat set revIndices to my reverseList(rowIndices) repeat with iRef in revIndices set rowNum to iRef as integer -- Directly use "row rowNum of t" to access the row set numCells to count of cells of (row rowNum of t) set deleteRowFlag to false repeat with j from 1 to numCells set cellRef to cell j of (row rowNum of t) set cellContent to value of cellRef if cellContent is not missing value then if cellContent contains "[DELETE_ROW]" then set deleteRowFlag to true exit repeat end if end if end repeat if deleteRowFlag then delete (row rowNum of t) log "Row " & rowNum & " : [DELETE_ROW] -> row deleted." else repeat with j from 1 to numCells set cellRef to cell j of (row rowNum of t) set cellContent to value of cellRef if cellContent is not missing value then if cellContent contains "[REPLACE]" and cellContent contains "[/REPLACE]" then try set startPos to offset of "[REPLACE]" in cellContent set endPos to offset of "[/REPLACE]" in cellContent set beforeTag to "" if startPos > 1 then set beforeTag to text 1 thru (startPos - 1) of cellContent set afterStart to endPos + (length of "[/REPLACE]") set afterTag to "" if afterStart ≤ (length of cellContent) then set afterTag to text afterStart thru -1 of cellContent set cellContent to beforeTag & "REPLACED" & afterTag set value of cellRef to cellContent log "Row " & rowNum & ", Column " & j & " : [REPLACE][/REPLACE] replaced by 'REPLACED'." on error errMsg log "Error for [REPLACE][/REPLACE] at row " & rowNum & ", column " & j & " : " & errMsg end try end if if cellContent contains "[ADD_ROW_1]" then try tell (row rowNum of t) set newRow to add row below end tell set value of cell j of newRow to "ROW ADDED" set cellContent to my replaceText(cellContent, "[ADD_ROW_1]", "") set value of cellRef to cellContent log "Row " & rowNum & ", Column " & j & " : [ADD_ROW_1] -> row added." on error errMsg log "Error for [ADD_ROW_1] at row " & rowNum & ", column " & j & " : " & errMsg end try end if if cellContent contains "[ADD_ROW_2]" then try tell (row rowNum of t) set newRow1 to add row below -- Add the second row below the first newly added row set newRow2 to add row below newRow1 end tell set value of cell j of newRow1 to "ROW ADDED" set value of cell j of newRow2 to "ROW ADDED" set cellContent to my replaceText(cellContent, "[ADD_ROW_2]", "") set value of cellRef to cellContent log "Row " & rowNum & ", Column " & j & " : [ADD_ROW_2] -> two rows added." on error errMsg log "Error for [ADD_ROW_2] at row " & rowNum & ", column " & j & " : " & errMsg end try end if if cellContent contains "[KEEP]" and cellContent contains "[/KEEP]" then try set startPos to offset of "[KEEP]" in cellContent set endPos to offset of "[/KEEP]" in cellContent set beforeTag to "" if startPos > 1 then set beforeTag to text 1 thru (startPos - 1) of cellContent -- Extract content between the tags set textStart to startPos + (length of "[KEEP]") set keptText to "" if endPos > textStart then set keptText to text textStart thru (endPos - 1) of cellContent set afterStart to endPos + (length of "[/KEEP]") set afterTag to "" if afterStart ≤ (length of cellContent) then set afterTag to text afterStart thru -1 of cellContent set cellContent to beforeTag & keptText & afterTag set value of cellRef to cellContent log "Row " & rowNum & ", Column " & j & " : [KEEP][/KEEP] -> content kept, tags removed." on error errMsg log "Error for [KEEP][/KEEP] at row " & rowNum & ", column " & j & " : " & errMsg end try end if if cellContent contains "[DELETE]" and cellContent contains "[/DELETE]" then try set startPos to offset of "[DELETE]" in cellContent set endPos to offset of "[/DELETE]" in cellContent set beforeTag to "" if startPos > 1 then set beforeTag to text 1 thru (startPos - 1) of cellContent set afterStart to endPos + (length of "[/DELETE]") set afterTag to "" if afterStart ≤ (length of cellContent) then set afterTag to text afterStart thru -1 of cellContent set cellContent to beforeTag & afterTag set value of cellRef to cellContent log "Row " & rowNum & ", Column " & j & " : [DELETE][/DELETE] -> content deleted." on error errMsg log "Error for [DELETE][/DELETE] at row " & rowNum & ", column " & j & " : " & errMsg end try end if end if end repeat end if end repeat end repeat end tell end repeat end tell end tell

For Pages, the script iterates over images, shapes, and body text. For images it checkes their description, for the shapes it checks in text, and deletes those that have a specific tag. For the body text, I face challenged to preserve the style and delete several paragraphs not necessarily containing the tag. My solution was to work at the section level: if a particular tag is found in the body text of a section, the script clears all the content within that section. I then have to manually remove the section break later. After processing the document’s content, I use GUI scripting to automate a find-and-replace operation. The script simulates pressing Command+F to open the search panel, clears the search field, enters the target search term, switches to the replacement field, clears it, and types in the new text before executing a “Replace All.” For Keynote this is the same for the search/replace all. Instead of sections, I simple use a tag in the presenter notes to target a slide to delete it. For images I also use a tag in the description. With Pages and Keynote my last little problem is the search & replace doesn't handle the line breaks. I'm stuck with this, but it's not such a huge problem for my project, I'll just have more constraints to deal with. Finally with Keynote I failed to target specific shapes and text item to delete. I manage to get the text, to find the tag, but then the deletion process seems erratic. I either end with nothing deleted or almost everything (including shapes and text items not having the tag). Again this is a small constraint I can deal with. Nonetheless, if some has a lead or a solution, I'd be happy to try it.

I'm a self-taught beginner, and I understand that sandboxing is considered a good practice. The app I'm developing is just for my personal use. It's meant to manipulate iWork documents for projects that no one else would be interested in, including with GUI Scripting. Right now, I've worked around the issue by generating a script that opens in Script Editor; I just have to run it, and everything works. However, I would prefer a more elegant solution that is fully managed within my app, without relying on Script Editor. My app will never be on the Mac App Store. I'm the only one working with my iWork documents for now, but maybe one day I'll have a team, in which case keeping the entire process within my app might become more important.

Thank you, DTS, for your invaluable assistance. I tried to generate and execute an AppleScript directly from the app using NSAppleScript. This script sends Apple Events to a target application (Pages) to modify a document (with and without GUI Scripting). Although Xcode’s console might indicate that the target application isn’t open, it is actually open because non-GUI modifications are still applied correctly. Here's a generic code: class GenericAppleScriptRunner { static func run(script: String) { if let appleScript = NSAppleScript(source: script) { var error: NSDictionary? let output = appleScript.executeAndReturnError(&error) if let error = error { print("Error executing AppleScript: \(error)") } else { print("AppleScript executed successfully: \(output.stringValue ?? "")") } } else { print("Unable to create NSAppleScript instance.") } } } let script = """ on robustReplace(theText, searchString, replacementString) set AppleScript's text item delimiters to searchString set textItems to every text item of theText set AppleScript's text item delimiters to replacementString set newText to textItems as string set AppleScript's text item delimiters to "" return newText end robustReplace tell application "Pages" try set docRef to document "SampleDocument" on error errDoc return "Error: " & errDoc end try set deletionTags to {"[DELETE_TAG]"} try set imagesList to images of docRef repeat with i from (count of imagesList) to 1 by -1 set img to item i of imagesList try set imgDesc to description of img as string on error set imgDesc to "" end try repeat with tag in deletionTags if imgDesc contains tag then delete img exit repeat end if end repeat end repeat on error errImages end try -- to clean some placeholders try set findText to "[FIND_TEXT]" set replaceText to "[REPLACE_TEXT]" set bodyText to body text of docRef as string set newBodyText to my robustReplace(bodyText, findText, replaceText) set body text of docRef to newBodyText on error errReplace end try activate end tell -- Above is processed, below isn't tell application "System Events" tell process "Pages" delay 0.2 keystroke "f" using {command down} delay 0.2 keystroke "a" using {command down} -- then follows the process to search & replace with GUI Scripting end tell end tell tell application "Pages" display dialog "Operation complete" buttons {"OK"} default button "OK" end tell """ GenericAppleScriptRunner.run(script: script) When I copy the real script to use it directly with ScriptEditor, it does work.