I have a 380-page Pages document. I want to break it up into two separate documents, then export them as PDFs. I first made a duplicate copy to work with. For the first new document, I placed the cursor at the end of the first section (end of page 337), then highlighted all the text below it and hit “delete.” Then I went back and deleted the images on those pages. I thought that once there was no content on those pages, they would just disappear, making page 337 the last page. But instead, there are 31 blank pages ending at page 368. How do I get rid of the blank pages?
My end goal is to have have the same original content in the single Pages document, but split into two separate PDF files.
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Cameron
Is this a Word Processing document or a Page Layout document?
If it is a Word Processing Document, then check to make sure the the text ends where you think it ends. Go to the last page and click on the Body text box. Press the delete kay and it should back up one character. If you are still at 368, then there is stuff there. Continue to hit Delete or select and delete.
Once that is done, then you've got to see if there are more elements on those pages. Start at the last page. Click on it and Command+A to see if there is anything there. Continue on the previous pages to see what else you find.
If this is a Page Layout document, then you have to use View, Page Thumbnails to see the pages on the left, select the blank ones and Delete to remove them.
It's a Word Processing Document. When I click on the last page (368), no cursor appears. When I hit Command+A, there is nothing highlighted on those blank pages (338-368). Could page breaks factor into this?
Cameron: How about this. Place your cursor at the very beginning of the document. Then Command+A to select all. Then right arrow to move the cursor to the end. See where you end up. What happens when you press Delete to remove the last character?
FYI -- Page Breaks are just an additional character. You can use View, Show Invisibles and actually see them.
I placed my cursor at the beginning of the document and selected all, like you said. When I press the right arrow, the cursor ends up right after the period at the bottom of the last page with text (337), and before all the blank pages (338-368).
Cameron: Did you try pressing the Delete key then? What happened? After that, try selecting those pages in the left sidebar and see if you can delete them there. If that doesn't work, I'm not sure what to do. If nothing is truly there, then it sounds like something is wrong with the document. Can you create a new one and copy and paste the contents into it?
Pressing the Delete key deletes the text on Page 337. If I select a page in the left sidebar and press Delete, it deletes the entire document. I selected all, then copy and pasted it into a new document, and the blank pages at the end are gone. But instead of 337 pages, there are only 333 pages. I'm not sure what didn't copy or why. This will take come time to compare, but should be doable I suppose.
So it didn't take me long to see why the discrepancy in the number of pages. It turns out the first page of the new document is a number of images that were throughout the original document that are now stacked on top of each other on Page 1. Is there a way to copy them so they stay in place when pasted?
Cameron: Not really. I don't know if you are dealing with 10 images or 100, is don't know how hard it will be to place them again. If they were inline images, they should have stayed with the text, I think. Otherwise, you can always just forget about the blank pages at the end of the document. If you export as a PDF or print, just use the pages in a range instead of All.
Yeah, I guess that would be the easiest thing to do. I was just hoping to preserve the Page XX of XXX insert, but I guess the practical side of me will have to overrule the perfectionist side on this one.