Techniques for Creating Letterhead Templates in Mac Pages

You can create your own custom templates that have your letterhead at the top of the first page, all pages, or different letterhead for first and subsequent pages. You can then easily use this template to create future documents.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's look at some different techniques you can use to create a letterhead template in Pages. 
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Now I often get asked about creating letterhead in Pages. This usually involves having some sort of graphics or information at the top of either every page of your document or the first page of your document and being able to easily start a new document and have that letterhead already in place. 
So let's start by creating a blank document. Just a regular blank document in Pages. We're going to use this to create a template with a letterhead in it. Let's create a simple letterhead using different elements in Pages. To start with I'm going to go to View and then Show Layout. Now I can see the Body Text and the regular margins and the Header and the Footer and all of that. It makes a little easier to work. Now I'm going to Shape and I'm going to add a line and put that line here at the top. This is just going to be an idea for kind of a sample template. Let's create another line here and let's put that at some point below the first. Let's create a box and cover that whole area with the box there. What I'm going to do is then set that color to something else. Like maybe a light gray. I'm going to send it to the Back. So I get something that looks like this. 
Let's add some text. This will be like the Title so put something like this. So the name of the company. We'll center that. Maybe set the font to something that we like to use. Shrink this textbox a bit like that and stick it right here in the middle. Let's create another textbox and put something like an address and maybe I'll stick that over here on the right like that. Also change that to that font and position it like that. Resize the box so it's not too big. Like that. For a type of graphic you can bring in an image or something. We're just going to use a shape here and maybe go with a little tree like that. Putting it here and maybe it represents some kind of logo or something. Play around with it. Recreate a letterhead that you already are using or create a new one that fits the style of whatever it is you do. 
Then I'm going to select all these elements. An easy way to do that is create a box around here like this. Go to Format, Arrange and I've got a lot of conflicting text wrap in here with all these elements. I'm going to set the Text Wrap from everything to Nothing. So basically that there is no wrapping around any of these. But since I have this box here that kind of is the background for the whole thing I'm going to set the Text Wrap for that to Automatic. So that means that the text of the body here will actually get pushed down by the background here but not by any of these other elements. If you don't have a background you can always just create one that is pure white or has no color at all. Just something there that will create the space that will push down any text so it starts underneath the letterhead. 
Now for good measure I'm going to select it all again and I'm going to go to Arrange and Group It so now it is just one element here that can easily move around. It's a little harder to accidentally grab a piece there and change. Then I'm going to set Format Object Placement to Stay On Page. So the entire thing will just stay right there. See how the Body Text here is just below it because it is getting pushed down and I can type something and then I can write the rest of my document. If I were to type a lot of something, I'll just Copy and Paste here, you could see that the second page won't have the letterhead there because it is just an element sitting here that happens to be sitting on the first page. There's nothing to make it appear on the second page or anything like that. Which is how a lot of people will want their letterhead to appear. 
Before saving this as a template another thing you may want to do is select the text here. You can see it is Body Text. Maybe change that to whatever it is that you want to use. Like change the Font, the Size, and all that. Update the Body Text Style. Do that for all the different styles in here if you like or just the ones you want to use. Since you're setting this as a template it is a convenient way to have you start off with the font and style that you want rather than having to change it each time you create a new document. 
So once you've got that going, I can erase all that here so it is ready to go as a fresh new document. I can choose File and then Save As Template and then let's choose Add it to the Template Chooser. Then I can Name it here, like that. I've got this sample document still here. I'll just close that and Delete it. Anytime I want it I can go and say File, New and then I can choose from My Templates, at the bottom, Letterhead and I can start off with a new document already to go with my letterhead here at the top and I can just type and it is easy to create these new documents. 
If I ever want to change this I can simply select this. I would Ungroup it and then change the elements and then Save this as a new template and then delete the old one.
Now let me go back to View here and then Show Layout again. You can see I've got the Header here and I could do things like having the Date or Page Number in there. You  may not want to use that for anything, that was my assumption with my first example. But, let's say you do actually want to have page numbering. Let's say you want to have it here in the Header right on the right so I'll insert Page Number and say just do a plain page number like that. So now my document looks like this. Letterhead at the bottom and a page number here. Now when I do type something and I paste it through you could see I don't get the letterhead on the second page because it is just an element sitting on the first page. But on the second page I do get the page number. So that is convenient except that I know a lot of people don't want to have that page number on the first page. As a matter of fact they want to have the Letterhead over the Header and there is a way to do that. 
If you go to Document and then Section there is a checkbox under Header and Footers for Hide on First Page of Section. If I check that notice there is no Header or Footer here. The first page just has my Letterhead. The second page doesn't have the Letterhead just as before but now how that Header and Footer which can have a page number or additional information. For instance, I could put a little kind of mini letterhead here and set it up like I want and that will appear on pages 2 and on. I'll have my Letterhead only without the Header and Footer on page 1. In addition I can move this Letterhead up so it is in the same position as Header and Footer.
To make it easier I'm going to go back to Document, Section and turn off Hide On First Page so I can see where this is. Then I'm going to move this on top, like that, and then turn this back On. Now I've got the Letterhead at the top in place of a Header. But on Page 2 I've got the Header with kind of a mini letterhead in there.
Now what would happen if you wanted this letterhead to appear on every page as part of the Header. Let's turn this Off again here. What I'm going to do here is I'm going to clear out the Header here. I'm going to take this element and I'm going to cut it with Command X. I'm going to go into any of these but the middle one works. I'm going to do Command V or Edit, Paste, and will paste into the Header. So what does that do that is different? Well, since it is in the Header, guess what. It's here on page 2 as well. It will be on every page in fact. So it's a quick and easy way to have your Header appear everywhere. Now if you use this technique note that it is very hard to actually edit anything once it is in the Header here. I can't actually double click and get into the group to change anything that's here. One way to deal with that is to cut-it, click somewhere else like in the body, and paste. Then you think now you can edit it. But actually it doesn't seem to be editable anymore. So I'm going to Undo that. Go back here. Notice if I go to Format there's a button that you may have never seen before. Move to Page. So this button seems to appear when you paste a complex item inside the Header. If I click Move to Page now it is just a regular element on the page again and I can double click, go into the group, and make changes. Then when I'm done I can select it and cut-it, paste it back into the Header again. 
Now what if you want to combine these and have two complex Headers. One that is on the first page and on that is on every other page. So I'm going to use Move To Page with this so it is not in the Header anymore. I'm going to Copy and Paste this so I have two copies of it. So let's go and take this one here. I'm going to Ungroup it and I'm going to make it a little bit nicer and bigger. So I'm going to enlarge the background here. Bring this line down. Make this larger. Bring this down into the middle. Maybe make this larger as well. Maybe more information. Whatever I want. I've got two Headers here. Let's group this back together. Now the goal is to have this on the first page and this one on every other page. So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to use the technique of cutting it, Command X, and pasting this into the Header. So now this one is on every page. This one is still just on the first page. So what I'm going to do is go to Documents, Section, Hide the regular Header on the first page. Move this up in its place. Now I've got this on the first page and then down here I've got this on the second page and every other page as well. So I've got two Headers. One for the first page and one for every other page. I'm going to select all the text here in the body and delete that. Now I've got the first page with the big letterhead. I don't have a second page so I don't see the small letterhead. Now I can Save this as a Template to use any time I need. 
So there are a variety of different techniques for creating letterhead templates in Pages. I kept it simple without using Sections which are another technique a lot of people use where they have the first page as a separate section from all other pages. They have different layout objects on each section. But that is kind of awkward to use because then you have to insert a section break somewhere at the end of your first page to continue onto the second section. So i'm keeping it simple just using objects on the page for the first page and objects in the Header for every page is just an easy way to have a simply letterhead template. Hope you find this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 4 Responses to “Techniques for Creating Letterhead Templates in Mac Pages”

Jim Haynes

12 months ago

Once you create a Pages template, can it be converted to a Microsoft Word for the Mac template?

Gary Rosenzweig

Jim: Not directly, no. You can certainly export it as a Word document, then use that Word document to start building a Word template, I suppose.

I am having trouble moving the address box and getting it to fit the right of the company name. Getting the handles for the address box to appear is also a problem.

Jim: Just keep working at it. Move other items out of the way or Lock them if you need.

Techniques for Creating Letterhead Templates in Mac Pages

Comments: 4 Responses to “Techniques for Creating Letterhead Templates in Mac Pages”

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