10 Things You Didn't Know You Could Do With Mac Pages

Here are 10 Mac Pages tips with ideas for special features you can use in your next Pages document.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me  
show you ten things that you may not know that you can do in Mac Pages. 
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Pages is the word processor that most Mac users use. However not everybody knows all  
the different things that it can do. Let me start off with a simple one. You can get the  
word count of your document by simply going to View, then Show Word Count or  
Shift Command W. This brings up the word count at the bottom of the screen. It tells you the  
word count of the entire document. But if you select some text it will tell you the word count  
of just that selection. If you click here you can see the character count with or without spaces,  
words, paragraphs, or pages. You can switch to one of those to be the default.
Now here's something to make your documents look prettier. You can use Drop Caps. What  
are Drop Caps? Well, I'll show you. Select a paragraph or just a beginning of a paragraph  
and then go to Format and Style. All the way at the bottom is Drop Cap. Turn that on. You'll see  
here it takes that first letter and makes that larger and covers several lines. You can change  
the number of lines or the number of characters. You can choose from one of the preset styles  
like this one or you can choose your own options. Outside of the Drop Cap interface  
there you can also just select that one letter and then change it to use a different font.
When you want to make text really standout, like the title here, you can, of course, make it Bold  
and you can change its color. But did you also know that you could use an image for the fill for  
the letters. Under Format, Style, under Text Color select Image Fill or Advanced Image Fill. When you  
do that it's going to use the default little pattern here. But you could drag and drop an  
image from the Finder right into this box and then it will use that image as the fill for the text.
Now I'm sure you know you can add images to your documents. But you could also add something called  
an Image Gallery. To do that go to Insert and use Image Gallery here. It will put this element  
in and let's resize it just like we would a normal image. Now we can drag multiple  
images here. So I'm going to select four images from the Finder and drag them in.  
You'll see four dots here and you can click on them to see each one. Also notice on the right,  
under Format Gallery we now have lots of options like here are the images. We can rearrange them.  
We can add new ones. Remove these. Choose whether the caption should be for the entire Image Gallery  
or have a different caption for each image. Image Gallery's are neat but only if you distribute  
your Pages document as a Pages document to somebody else. If you save it out as a PDF,  
well, it's not available as a function inside of PDF readers so you're not going to be able to use  
the Image Gallery. So if you're building something with Image Gallery's in it your choice is pretty  
much to distribute it as a Pages document to somebody else or perhaps you're using it  
because you're using Pages to build something that will then be uploaded to Apple Books.
Another type of unusual media that you can add is a web video. So you can go to Insert and  
Web Video and it will ask you for a url or something like a YouTube video. So here's  
one of my MacMost videos. If I go to Share it gives me a link. I can copy that link.  
Then if I paste it in here you could see it appear with the title and everything. I could  
use Insert here and now I've got this element that is a YouTube video and I can even play it  
inside of a Pages document. Just like Image Gallery you really need to distribute it as a  
Pages document. This isn't going to work in a pdf or obviously when you print.
Now it may seem obvious that when you create a document it looks like this. But you could  
also use columns to distribute the text among columns. So I could put my cursor here inside the  
body text. Go to Format and then Layout. Then set the number of columns. I'll increase it to 2. You  
could see it flows the text in two columns. But you don't have to do it for the entire document.  
I'm going to select here at the beginning of the text, go to the end of the document and select  
that. So everything except the title and subtitle here. Then when I change the number of columns you  
could see the title and subtitle remain as one column but the rest go to two columns.
One of the most useful functions in editing that people don't know about is the ability  
to revert to previous versions of the document. Every time you save your document it's actually  
remembering what the document looks like at that point. So the more that you use  
File, Save or Command S the better. Then you go to File, Revert To and browse all versions. You'll go  
into a time machine-like interface. Here you'll see all your previous versions. So you could flip  
through your previous versions and here you can see, for instance, I saved when I was showing  
you the Column View here. So if I wanted to I could Restore and revert to this version of it.  
Another thing you could do is you can actually click in here and then Select Text. So if you have  
deleted text and you have it in a previous version you could select the text, then Command C to copy,  
and then just use Done to get out of that interface. Then you can paste that text in.
You can also encrypt your document with a password. So you just need to go to File,  
and then Set Password. Then you're asked to set a password. Verify.  
Add a Hint if you like. The Checkbox for Remember this Password in my Keychain  
means that while you're working with this document on your Mac you won't even notice that it is  
password protected. It will automatically open it up. But once you set a password this doesn't  
simple lock the document. This encrypts it. So unless you have the password there's no way to  
get to the contents of that document. So make sure you remember the password.  
Save it somewhere or put it in your Keychain. But you can send this document to somebody else  
and if they know the password they'll be able to get it securely and only they can open it.
Another thing you can do is collaborate with somebody. Not just passing a document back  
and forth. But in Real Time. If you click the Collaborate button here you can choose  
who can access. So, Only People You Invite, and what Permission they have whether it's  
View Only or they can Make Changes. If you set it up that they can make changes then you can  
Share with them. Let's use the Messages app to send them the link although you  
could copy the link or send it to them in an email message as well. Then I'm going to click  
Share. Then I'm going to type the Apple ID of the person I want to share it with  
and send this. Once they join you'll see the number of people collaborating with  
you here at the top and you'll be able to type but also they will be able to type.  
Then you'll see the changes there. You even see a little color so as this person types here  
you'll see it update in real time. They'll see  
your updates in real time as well. This is great for collaborative note taking.  
But do note that the Pages document needs to be saved to iCloud for this to work.
When you go to set the page size for a Pages document if you go to the Document sidebar here  
you'll only see a limited number of options. It looks like that is all you can choose. But you  
could set any page size you want by going to File, and then Page Setup. Here you'll see the same  
two things. The Format For and Paper Size. But now Paper Size has Managed Custom Sizes. You could  
add a new size. So you can create kind of a custom size for Pages, give it a name,  
and now you'll see this appear  
here in the list at the bottom. You notice that the pages in your document now fit that size.
Here's one bonus tip. You can set the background color for your entire document really easily. Just  
go to Documents and then Section. Then the first item here is Background. It's usually  
set to be transparent. But if you open this up here you can change it to a color, a gradient,  
even an image for the background. Let's just set it to a simple color. You can see how I can  
choose the color here. Now the entire document uses that as the background color. Note though  
that it is for this section. So if you document has multiple sections you can set a different  
background color for each section.This, of course, isn't that great  
for printing. But if you plan to distribute your document as a pdf  
you can color the background and even add a subtle shade or gradient to make it more interesting.
So I hope you learned something new about Pages. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 7 Responses to “10 Things You Didn't Know You Could Do With Mac Pages”

nick

4 years ago

Gary, coming from MS Word environment one of the features I used often was to hyperlink various spots within the document so you could jump to them. I haven't been able to find this in Pages, does it exist? thx

Gary Rosenzweig

Nick: Yes, sure. See https://macmost.com/creating-text-links-in-mac-pages.html

Paul Reynolds

Fascinating Gary, for me one of your best. I need to use Pages more.

Leslie Krake

Very informative - thank you.

Marcia

Do picture gallery's or videos work if you save it as a Word document?

Marcia: I’m sure the galleries don’t. But try a video and see.

Steve Underwood

I love your tutorials, Gary! Thanks so much for regularly offering such useful material. I learned a lot, as usual!

Comments Closed.

10 Things You Didn't Know You Could Do With Mac Pages

Comments: 7 Responses to “10 Things You Didn't Know You Could Do With Mac Pages”

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