How to use the hidden features in Apple’s Pages for Mac

Maybe Apple needs to rethink the way it does software programs. With Keynote, Numbers, and now Pages, it’s constantly the same tale. These apps are so easy to apply that human beings unthinkingly assume they’re underpowered. We have frequently heard people announcing Pages is quality for fundamental needs, but it isn’t Microsoft Word as it does not have feature X or Y. Sometimes we recognize for a fact that this is not proper, and most of the time, we suspect it isn’t. If you know in which to appear, Pages has startlingly powerful capabilities.

Of path, there are also instances when we realize for positive that the complaint is accurate. This could mainly be whenever a person says you can not do outlining in Pages. There is a way. However, it’s an unsatisfying workaround that we will let you know about only because you are now curious. For pretty much the whole thing else, Pages is deeply well designed, and if it hides its effective functions, it does not conceal them thoroughly. You can fast go from new user to professional, and Pages will assist you along every step of the way from idea to finished writing. All of the subsequent applies to Pages at the Mac. Much of its miles are identical on iPad and iPhone; however, that is an exceptional Pages model with its very own benefits and issues.

Starting from scratch

Seemingly you cannot simply start a brand new, blank document in Pages and get writing. Instead, it looks as when you have to choose File, New after which picking from an array of templates. Templates are high-quality. Templates are first-rate. Pages come with extra than 70 —we misplaced remember —with pre-designed files acceptable for the entirety from an educational record to an envelope. These templates are divided into eleven sections, inclusive of Books, Letters, Flyers & Posters. There’s also a twelfth called Al, which obviously lists each template butt in a list divided into these same sections for ease of finding.

The closing of the sections is referred to as My Templates. If you ever use the template, thiss section is the single most beneficial of all sections and simply frustrating that it’s on the cease. When you first open this Template Chooser and select All segment, quickly type M and Y. That takes you to the My Templates segment; however, you’ve got then were given to use your mouse or trackpad to click and pick out one of the templates.

Mac

There is a way to leap to it faster than clicking at the segment or scrolling down through All. However, it’s now not massively quicker. You cannot press the proper arrow key to transport from the sections into the templates, and also, you cannot do the equal typing trick to jump to one. We might honestly like a capacity to mark templates as favorites and feature the onesie, the primary factor you see in the Chooser. That’s partly, though, due to the fact we don’t use any templates.

Byways, the massive majority of the time, we want a blank record. Officially a simple, clean document is still a template, just as an alternative empty one, but that’s what we need —and you may reduce down the stairs to getting it. Go to Preferences, General. The top phase there may be known as For New Documents, and it has two alternatives. By default, Show Template Chooser is chosen. However, you can transfer it to Use Template as an alternative.

Then you have to specify which one you need, which means clicking on the button Change Template. Do that, and you are presented with the Template Chooser once more. Select the clean file, even though, and any more that you get each time you choose File, New. You’ve spotted the hassle, although. Once in a blue moon, we need to use a template, and we’ve now locked ourselves out of the Template Chooser. To get it to lower back temporarily, select File, New once more; however, preserve down the Option key simultaneously as you do.

About that outlining

Use that option key trick to open the Template Chooser and now look for one referred to as Note Taking. This is the workaround for outlining in Pages. It didn’t be once. Pages had a quality outliner lower back within the day, back earlier than Apple remodeled the whole app in 2013. So some distance, it hasn’t restored outlining. That becomes an average Apple circulate that did make a higher app but at the fee of fundamental functions that the corporation may then slowly restore.

However, it does have this Note Taking template, and it, as a minimum, seems a bit like an outlining tool. It comes with an example of outline-fashion headings and indents. Select all of the example text, hit delete, and begin typing. If you start a sentence with a range of or a Roman numeral, then when you hit Return on the end of it, you’ll automatically get a successfully-numbered subsequent line.

So you could unexpectedly produce a numbered listing. You can also create the sort of headings and subheadings you get in outlines. With your cursor at the start of a line, hit Tab, and also, you indent that line. Anything you type now and turned into already on that line will be modified to a subheading of the road above.

You can maintain tabbing to indent traces and shift-tabbing to out-dent them. Eventually, you grow to be with a file that looks very similar to a define. If you’re doing this to offer an offer to a writer, it can even be enough. Doubtlessly you will upload some traces and delete others, but the basic shape is there and entire. Only outlining is simplest, partly approximately imparting your work. It’s nearly an unintentional facet impact that defines is a presentable file that facilitates you to promote thoughts. Really outlining is ready to find and shaping one’s thoughts.

Pages do none of this. It’s about helping you get to the center of what you need to bring, then locating how precisely to offer it inside the pleasant order. The closest it comes is in how it lets you re-order entries within the definition. Each line begins with an image that includes a bullet factor for the principal headings and a minus signal for the subheads. Click and hold on to this sort of symbol, and you can drag the lineup and down to anywhere you want. When you finish dragging, Pages renumbers the entire record to reflect the new order.

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