Pages is the anti-Microsoft Word. Where Word has every single conceivable feature going -- and quite a lot of them work, even! -- it does rather show them to you. Despite the promise of the Ribbon making it easier to find what you want, Word users still have to hunt through buttons and icons that they'll never need to know, nor care about. In contrast, Pages does less, and looks like it does a gigantic amount less. We've had people ask us about swapping to Word because Pages doesn't do X or Y -- when it does.
It's not Apple messing with us, it's Apple being Apple. Pages is the word processor for getting on with your writing, and all the other features it does are there waiting for you when you want them. Certainly they could be easier to find, but they're there. Given the choice between a sea of unused features and the plain white screen with just that get-on-with-it cursor, we rather like Pages.
Which does mean we use it, which then does mean that we have favorite tips. This Pointers is going to be all over the shop, it's a grab-bag of Pages details: please us picture us going oooh, and there's that, we must say that. This is what we have found, and that we like about having found in Pages.
It was all tested in Pages 5.6 on OS X El Capitan, but a lot of it works on older versions too. It'd be good to be able to say this feature works in these versions and that one works in those, but Apple does radically change Pages so much that we can't be sure. We also can't be sure that Pages won't change again, and lose some of these features we so like -- but then coping with that possibility is one of the tips we have for you.
Word count
This bugged us for ages and then we found it, then we used it for ages, and in looking up a detail to tell you we've found something else new about the Word Count. Thank you. Here's the thing: by default, Pages does not show you how many words you've written, and it's highly likely that millions of users don't care. We do, and you look like you do too, so just go to the View menu and choose Show Word Count.
It's slightly less obvious in the iOS version of Pages: there you need to tap the spanner icon, then tap Settings and switch on Word Count. When you do that, though, the word count stays on for every document until you positively choose to switch it off. On Pages for OS X, we find the word count will go away by itself.
There's another advantage to the iOS Pages word count: it stays on, and it stays at the bottom of the screen in a black lozenge as you scroll down or write past it. On OS X Pages, the same word count is black text on a white lozenge with a thin border; you can easily miss it. Except you can't easily miss it when you're typing where it is on the screen: it is somehow much more intrusive than the bolder, darker iOS word count.
The thing we've just learned is that you can move it. This is only on the OS X version, but you can drag that word count around the screen. Unfortunately there is no good spot for it: the count will only float somewhere over your text, you can't drag it to a margin or a toolbar. So we will probably still keep switching it off and wishing there were a built-in keyboard shortcut for that.
While you're dragging, though, give that count a click: it will show you document statistics such as the number of paragraphs. On iOS, you can tap on the word count to get the same thing. Both also have the Word-like count of the number of characters, including spaces, and the number excluding them. We have had writing jobs where the number of characters was crucial, but of course it was the number of all characters. If you have a single clue why anyone would ever have an actual use for knowing how many characters bar spaces, let us know.
Do it with style
When you let us know a reason for characters-not-including-spaces, we'll meet in a bar, buy you a drink and get down to some serious discussion about Styles. It's the feature of word processors that most people don't know about, that a subset know of but are sure isn't for them, and subber-set of people who are put off. Styles are a daunting idea, and the only way you're not agreeing with us is if you are already using them, and they've been so useful that they've erased the pain you had figuring them out.
Click on the Format button in the OS X Pages toolbar. You get every formatting tool you'd expect, from Bold and font sizes to colors and whether the text is justified right and left or not. At the very top, though, tool number one is Styles. In our screen shot it's showing the word Body, but you can click to get more.
These are all pre-built styles provided by Apple: click on any of them, and whatever paragraph your cursor is in will change to look like that. So where to make a heading you might otherwise select some text, choose Format, turn it bold and make the font size bigger, you can do that with a style. Select some text, choose Format, click on a heading style you like. It doesn't sound like the greatest time-saver in the world and it isn't, not for this part.
Where it is the single greatest time saver in the world is later on. Having told Pages that this is a heading, the word processor remembers that. It doesn't matter what a heading looks like, whether you've turned it pink and tiny or red and gigantic, to Pages it's a heading. Which means if you now submit this same text to an academic journal and the corduroy boys there don't like pink, you can change the heading style, and every single heading in your document will transform immediately.
In practice, you're going to rewrite a document when you send it somewhere different, but at least this way Pages removes some of the drudgery. If you have yet to have a 100,000-word document and a need to change every single heading, then take our word that it may not be a level of hell exactly, but it's at least a mezzanine floor of hell.
Don't do this
We like Pages, and we're inured to it changing features, especially when we didn't like the features it changed. If there is one thing we get asked about, though, it's making an outline in Pages, now that Apple has erased that feature. Our answer has become: get OmniOutliner instead. Yet it is an odd gap in the word processor that it doesn't let you outline, and if you really must outline we really do recommend OmniOutliner.
If you're already a die-hard outlining fan and must outline, but don't want to buy a second app, then there is a way to fake it up in Pages. This really, really is just for you if you're already outline-obsessed. We'd say the only worse way to put you off outlining is to try it in Microsoft Word.
Open a new Pages document and choose the Note-taking template. Delete the main text, and type a single line. When you hit return, you get another line with a dash at the start. Type something else, hit return, and then hit the tab key. You again get a new line, but this time it is indented, and the dash has become a dot.
That's the closest you'll get to an outline's levels: you can see a hierarchy and you can add sub-comments, but you can't collapse them down to see just the main headings. You can, though, drag them around: click and hold on the dash or dot, and you can drag the lines where you like.
You can also change from dots and dashes to numbers: in the Format pane, there is a Bullets & Lists option at the foot. Choose that, and you can switch from the default Note Taking style to 1, 2, 3 and so on.
Backup to Word
The newest version of Pages has restored the ability for you to open older documents. That's nice, but it's taken about 20 months to get this feature back, and you've had all these documents you couldn't get into. The answer used to be to always keep the older version of Pages around, but that's no longer an easy option -- as the Mac App Store will now update over the old one as of the latest version (it used to just put it aside in a folder).
This is going to be one of those great pieces of advice that we'll urge you to do, and fully intend to do ourselves too, but neither one of us is going to keep it up. Still, this is how to avoid being burnt again. Save a backup copy to Word.
You don't even need to have Microsoft Word around: you're never going to actually use it. It's just that if you save a Pages document to Word format and Apple radically revises Pages, you can bet your life that the new one will be able to open Word documents.
To do it, open your Pages document and choose File/Export To. From the several options you get, choose Word. Don't bother with password protection, and don't bother with the Advanced options, just click Next and save it. You'll need to make it a habit and we'd strongly suggest having a folder that you save only these versions to.
Share to Word too
That said, Word is a good choice for when you're sending documents to someone else. If you don't know what word processor they've got and you do need to send them something they can edit, then choose Word again. Just don't do it through the File/Export To menu. Click on the Share icon in the toolbar instead.
You won't see a Word option. Choose Mail, and Pages will then ask what format you want to email this document. Choose Word there, and now Pages is opening up a new Mail message with your document already included as a Word attachment.
It probably couldn't be easier, but when you first do this with someone new, check that they got it okay. We've found that in depending on their machines and their versions of Word, sometimes the attachment has arrived as a string of unreadable garbage. Also, some people tell you they are using Word, but actually they're on LibreOffice or another free alternative, so sometimes there are unexpected incompatibilities.
None of which really fits the Pages image of being easy to use and letting you just get on with your writing, but does fit the Apple idea of having features available just when you need them.
-- William Gallagher (
@WGallagher)
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