[madmacgames]

I've been importing some of my Word docs into Pages and not everything always imports, which is fine and I expected that I would have to redo some things.

I cannot seem to locate anywhere to set a border for a style, like a paragraph border.

While paragraph borders may seem trivial to some, they are very useful on documents such as memorandums, letterheads, resumés, etc...

So I am overlooking where the border properties are, or does Pages just not have any?

[Shades of Gray]

If you open the Inspector, click inside the table, then on the Inspector click on the 7th icon from the left (4th from the right), which is the Table Inspector. At the bottom of that palette you will find the table borders.

Is that what you were looking for?

[madmacgames]

Originally posted by Shades of Gray:
Is that what you were looking for?

No, I am talking about paragraph borders, not table borders. Even if I put it in a table, it would not work because for example you can the top & bottom table borders on, but not just one or the other.

Here is an example of what I am talking about: A resumé, where each main section's heading has a 1px border underneath it.

I can do this by drawing a line, but it is a pain in the ass to get the line in the correct position so that it looks like the text is riding on top of the line, like a bottom paragraph border would accomplish, if such a thing existed in Pages.

Plus it is even more of a pain that once you get the line positioned, you can't apply that to the style, and so for each new section heading, you have to draw a new line and get it positioned correctly, etc...

Doing it once would not be so much of a problem if I could just apply it to the style.

So my question was, am I missing where you could do paragraph borders (like a line above, or a line below, or a line to the left, or a line to right) or where you can apply a line to a paragraph style?

[Shades of Gray]

Okay, I misread your OP.

The only thing I can think for a work around is to define a paragraph style (Underline) that would be underlined (give it a small point size, i.e. 9), then include this style in the following Paragraph style dialog for the Heading. You can tab over as far you want the underline. then for the following Paragraph for Underline, you could set it as Body.

So after Heading, hitting Return would produce the Underline Paragraph style, and just tab however mlong you want the line. Then hit Return again and the Body Paragraph style would be applied.

Granted, not ideal, but it could be made to work, and at least the same size could be applied throughout the document, regardless of section.

[chabig]

I don't think Pages support paragraph borders. But you can get the same result by using a line shape as an inline graphic. The line will move with the text.

Chris

[madmacgames]

Originally posted by chabig:
I don't think Pages support paragraph borders. But you can get the same result by using a line shape as an inline graphic. The line will move with the text.

I know that, and already stated that I know I can do that in the 2nd reply. It just becomes quite annoying to have to do it every time you want it on a particular style that is used throughout the document.

[Shades of Gray]

Originally posted by madmacgames:
It just becomes quite annoying to have to do it every time you want it on a particular style that is used throughout the document.

Well, did you try the Paragraph style with underline as the follow on paragraph?

[madmacgames]

Originally posted by Shades of Gray:
Well, did you try the Paragraph style with underline as the follow on paragraph?

Yeah that doesn't really work. The only way I can see to get the text from the paragraph above it to "ride" on top of it, is to make the underline paragraph font size 1, which makes the underline almost completely disappear.

Is there a way to make a paragraph "block" display I guess. For example, in a Table of Contents, if you underline a TOC entry, it draw a line the entire way across the page, no matter how long the entry is. Is there a way for normal paragraphs to behave like this? Then I could just underline those styles.

[chabig]

Originally posted by madmacgames:
I know that, and already stated that I know I can do that in the 2nd reply. It just becomes quite annoying to have to do it every time you want it on a particular style that is used throughout the document.

You don't have to do it every time. Just do it once, then copy and paste.

Chris

[Shades of Gray]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by madmacgames:

Is there a way to make a paragraph "block" display I guess. For example, in a Table of Contents, if you underline a TOC entry, it draw a line the entire way across the page, no matter how long the entry is. Is there a way for normal paragraphs to behave like this? Then I could just underline those styles.

Perhaps this will work. You can use a Paragraph style within a table, i.e. Heading1. Then make the table just one cell that extends across the page. Select each part of the cell and set the line width of None, except for the bottom portion of the cell. Then you can copy and paste this. And it will always be that heading, the line will always be below the text the same distance and the Paragraph Style can still be included in the TOC.

In fact, now that I have done it this way, I will be using this exact set up for my book project that I am ready to start. Or until Apple updates and gives us that capability directly. But this is a good solution for me. Thanks for pushing back.

[madmacgames]

Cool thanks for the tip on using a single table cell. I didn't know you could select the borders individually. I just saw the borders on/off options and that it showed both or none there.

I've also found that tabs are stored in a paragraphs style. So for a left aligned heading, you can also setup a single right tab located at the page's right border, underline the text in what style you want, and just hit tab once and it will draw it out across the screen. Cool thing about this, is that the right tab you set is stored in the paragraphs style, so for each new header, you just have to type it and hit tab once. Of coarse the downfall of this method is you can't specify how far away the underline is, and you can only do a single line or double line, so if you want a dotted line or a line with a bigger width, it won't work.

At least I have some different solutions for some different scenarios.

On a side note, why must the line always be at a 45° angle when you insert a new one?

[chabig]

Originally posted by madmacgames:
On a side note, why must the line always be at a 45° angle when you insert a new one?

Good question. I bet Apple did some research showed that if it were horizontal people would assume it had to be horizontal.

Chris