Creating Bullet Lists In Pages

You can create both bullet lists and numbered lists in Pages. Bullets can be many different characters or even images. Numbered lists can use a variety of numbering systems. You can mix and match list types and even create your own styles.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at creating Bullet and Numbered Lists in Pages.
I'm using Pages version 5.2 and I'm starting out with a completely blank document. I'm going to put some lines of text that might naturally go to a bullet list. I'm going to select them and apply the bullet list format clicking on the format button up here and then down on the right you can see where it says Bullets & Lists. I'm going to select Bullet and you can see I've created a simple bullet list.
Now you can continue to add on to the end of the bullet list by simply hitting return after the last line and starting a new line. It will continue putting bullets in front of everything like that. 
If you want to exit the bullet list the simplest way to do it is to hit return twice. If you hit return after a blank line you can see you begin here typing normal text and you are out of the bullet list.
Inside the bullet list you can do indents by using the tab key. So I'm going to tab while inside there and Shift Tab to go the other way. I can also go, over here in the Format bar, use these two buttons to indent further. So there is a lot you can do. You can even select multiple lines and indent like that.
Now you can change the look of the bullet list by selecting the entire thing and then looking at more options here in the format sidebar. I'm going to scroll up here and you can see I've opened this up and I have lots of different selections down here but I've got some main selections here at the top. I can go to a larger bullet. These are all basically preset formats. I can go Lettered and Number as well.
Let's look at bullets for a second here. I can change the bullet style here. I can even change the color. I can change the size of the bullet relative to the size of the normal text like that. I can even align it differently. Sometimes the vertical alignment of bullet type characters can be a little off and don't look visually appealing. So you can adjust that. There is a lot of different things that you can do. You can also change the indents of the entire thing or just the text part in relation to the bullet.
Now a numbered list works pretty much the same way except, of course, there is a different thing before each line. So let's change this to a standard numbered list like that and you can see I've got that there. If I were to indent a certain line, I'll put the tab in there and indent in, you can see it starts numbering again inside of that. So I can also select the two lines here and you can see it does everything properly.
I also can change the type of numbering by line. So if I wanted to actually change these two and instead make them letters I can do that by only have those two selected when I do it. You can even do weird things. Like, for instance, you can see I've tabbed back there and it is going to do 1, B, C, 4, 5. So I can reapply numbered to those so it does it properly. So you can kind of mix and match things even if it doesn't look quite right.
You can also use Image Bullets. You can see another type here. Let's use Image and then you have a list of images that you can use like these check boxes here. Or you can also import your own custom image. So there is a lot of different things that you can do with these images. You can also still adjust the size of them to make them larger relative to what is there and you can adjust different things like say the line spacing right here which is a separate thing from the bullet list but comes in handy if you are using images and you want to make them pretty large.
Now there are some preset styles here. For instance you can do Harvard for some sort of standard formatting for outlines. You can also choose say Note Taking. Note Taking is kind of dashes and dots every other one.
Creating your own bullet list styles is really tricky and doesn't work very well. The best way to do it that I can figure out is to have a single line like this and assign it say a bullet list style. Then go in and change the type of bullet like that. Now if I were to go into here I can see I've got Bullet and I can Update the bullet list style which I don't want to do. Instead what I want to do is hit the Plus symbol there and create a new style called Test. 
Now of course there is no point to creating a new style like this unless you are going to have different things for each indentations. So what I'm going to do is add another line here and I'm going to indent it one with the tab key, change the symbol. Now I'm selected in there and you can see that its got an asterisk next to it which means it is a style Test but there has been a modification. So I'm going to go in here and I'm going to Update that style.
I'm going to do the same thing here. I'm going to add another level. I'm going to a third one and do this, change the bullet to something else, and again I've got the asterisk there, I'm going to Update. Now you will find that if indeed I start a new list and assign to it my new Test style and I indent this one and this one you can see it matches. So I was able to actually create it that way. You would think you would be able to create it a lot of different ways just by selecting this entire thing and creating a style from it but it doesn't quite work that way in the current version of Pages. You have to play around with it and do it step by step.
So another thing to look at is if you have a Numbered list. Let's change this to a numbered list here and you wanted to continue in separate lists. You can see there if I were to create a separate list here this one now starts at 4 and 5 which is great if you want to put a paragraph of text between them. But say you want this to restart at one the options for this are down here. You've got Continue From Previous or Start From. So you can do Start From one and it instantly changes. Or Continue From Previous is going to look back at the last list and continue the numbering from there.
You can also use this in a handy way if you want to continue from some sort of previous list that is not part of the same document or is too far away for it to pick up or you want to start a list at a different number for some reason you can do it this way.
You may have noticed the Tiered Numbers option here. Tiered Numbers allows you to do a popular outline format where it includes the previous number like that. So this is 1 and this is 1.1 and this is 1.2 there.

Comments: 6 Responses to “Creating Bullet Lists In Pages”

Bob Douglass

10 years ago

Gary-
Nice, easy to understand review of how bullets work.
You save me hours with your 'help' videos.

Thanks!

Linda

Thanks for making these wonderful videos. I watch them all and and save them for future reference! You do a great job, and your videos are nice and easy to understand!

Shirley Allan

Strangely I have been struggling with stopping lists so was overjoyed to see this tutorial. The only way I can stop the list from continuing is to press Return AND Delete. There must be a setting somewhere that is preventing my Pages 5.2 from using the Return twice quickly to stop a list.

Linda Taylor

This sounds very easy, but I haven't updated to Pages 5 yet and was wondering if the same procedure is used in Pages 4. I have a rather involved list, containing 7 levels of indentation with different types and sizes of bullets. I was told I'd need to create a style for each level, but thought creating a bullet style like you did much easier. Do you remember the 'old version' enough to advise? Thanks bunches.

Gary Rosenzweig

You can do the same thing, but it works very differently in Pages 4. It has been more than a year, so I won't be of much help.

Tom

Gary:
Your "Creating Bullet Lists In Pages" came in the "nick of time", I am putting together an outline presentation on numbers "from" the Pages program with reference "add-on links" and my frustration is over on how to use the bullet list more efficiently. Thanks again, and keep up the great work!

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Creating Bullet Lists In Pages

Comments: 6 Responses to “Creating Bullet Lists In Pages”

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