How To Use Custom Paper Sizes In Pages

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how you can use custom paper sizes in Pages.

So when you're working in Pages your document has a specific page size, a width and height, for the paper that your document will be printed on. Even if you're creating a PDF, the PDF pages have a width and height as well. So, how do you customize this? 

Well, let's start a new document here. I'm just going to use a blank word processing document but this works the same if you're using Page Layout as well. To see what's going on here I'm going to go to View and then Show Layout so I can see the Body Text, the Header and the Footer. I'm also going to go to View, Show Rulers so I can see here that I've got a page that is 8½ wide by 11 tall, which is a standard size for paper in the United States. I can zoom out a bit here so I can see more clearly what I've got. Let's say that this is not the size of the page that I want either because I'm printing on different paper or because I'm printing to a PDF and I don't necessarily want this paper size. So you would think that you would go to the Document Sidebar here and then under the Document Section this is where you would set this up. After all you can see here the margins so it would make sense you would also be able to set the complete size for the page. In fact at the top it has a section called Printer & Paper Size. So it seems this is where the setting should be. 

You can see right here the paper size, US Letter, which is the 8½ by 11. If I choose this I can select a variety of different sizes right here. You're probably going to see something different here in this list because these sizes are from my printer. My printer tells my Mac what size paper it can handle and this is the list it produces. But notice there's no Custom size here. I have to select one of these. I can't specify the exact width and height anywhere here. 

However, I can switch from my printer to Any Printer. So in other words don't pay attention to the specific printer settings but instead let me choose from a standard list. Then here I do, in fact, get a slightly different list of some standard page sizes. But still no way to customize it, to make it any width and height I want. It seems like it is impossible! But it isn't. You just need to know where to look. 

You have to go to the File Menu. Under File, above Print at the bottom is Page Setup. You go there. Then you get the Page Setup dialogue. Page Setup used to be pretty standard for almost every app. But today you only really find it in certain apps like Word Processing Apps, like Pages. Here you've got a Format For Menu which is the same as this Printer Menu here. I can select the same things, and you've got Paper Size. If you select that you'll see the same page sizes here but you'll see a new item, Manage Custom Sizes. This is what we want. But first let's change Format For to Any Printer so that the custom size we choose will work on any printer that we've got and will work for saving PDF's as well. So now we'll go back to Paper Size here and Manage Custom Sizes. 

When I select that I have this new interface here where I can create a custom page size. To start you need to click the Plus button here at the bottom to add a new item. It will just have the name Untitled. Then we can set any width and height we want. So, for instance, if we wanted to do something custom like, say, 14 wide by 9 tall, we could do that. You could also set the margins for the page. You have to have User Defined chosen here and then you can set these to anything you want. So if we're just creating PDF's we don't need to have something special here for the bottom. We can just have a ¼" all the way around. Now we can name this by just selecting it and then clicking again here and then giving it a name. So we can call it something that will help us remember what we used this page size for. If we want we can even put the page size in it to make it easier to find the right one. So now I've got this special page size here. I can click Okay. Then notice it has chosen here in Page Setup. I can click Okay here and under the Document Sidebar I'll see that since I've got a specific printer selected, and there is no page size that is that size for that printer, it just says Other. But if I switch to Any Printer you can see it correctly selects my special one. 

If I add more custom ones they would appear here below this line. I can add as many as I want and I've got Page Orientation. So if I do want to switch the dimensions I can. It does recognize that the custom size is wider than it is tall so it checks the wide page orientation instead of the tall one. But I can switch, like that, and you can see the page change. I can still set the Document Margins here which are different than the actual page, the printing margins, from before. They obviously need to be the same as, if not larger, than those but I can still adjust those here to adjust, say, the body text in this document. 

But now I've got something that is a document that is 14 by 9. At any time in the future, in another document that I need to use this special size I can find it by choosing Any Printer here and then the special size listed at the bottom.

This is actually easier to do in the iPhone or iPad version of Pages. All you need to do is be inside your document, so here I am with a blinking cursor, where I can type and then I just need to tap the three dots button at the top right and go to Document Options. Then here there is Document Setup and under Document Setup you can see Paper Size. I can just choose Custom Size and I can just type whatever width or height that I want. 

On an iPad you would tap next to the Name of the Document at the top. Then choose Document Options and then Document Setup. Here is where you can choose Custom Size. 

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Now one thing to know about Pages documents is that the page size is the same for every page in the document. If it is 8½ by 11 inches that is the paper size for every page. You can't mix paper sizes in the same document. Now, if you're printing you're unlikely you want to do that. You're printing on the same paper, probably from the same printer. But if you're creating PDF you may want to have a page in there that's a different size. You can do that but you need to put the different page sizes in different documents. So maybe one document that has all of the text at the regular page size and then for that special page that has a chart or something on it you would create a separate Pages Document. Then you can export as a PDF from each document and merge them. 

So, for instance, here I've got one document with a lot of text in it that is the standard size and then I have this other document that is a special wide page with this table in it. I just want to have this table in PDF in the middle of all the rest of these pages as kind of a special insert. So how do I do that? Well, the first thing I want to do is produce the PDF as I normally would. I can do File, Print and then PDF or Export To PDF, like this. Let me save this out and I'll just save it here to the Desktop. Then I'm going to do the same thing with this special document that just has this one page in it. This document, you can see here, is using a different page size that's 17 by 11. Very unusual size. So let's go here to File, Export to PDF and save this out as well. 

All I need to do is open up this one here in Preview and you can see here I've got the Thumbnails Sidebar turned On. I can then take this document here, and I can open that up in Preview as well, and then perhaps grab this page from it. But I can also just take the document itself, just Drag & Drop it right in here. So let's say it is between pages 3 and 4. So now I've inserted it there. There's page 3 like that. There's the next page which is now 4 which is the special size, and then there's 5. Now if I save this document here, a quick Command S, and now when I look at this document here I've got a document that is this mix of page sizes in one PDF. 

Now for printed documents you would just print one document using the one type of paper, the other document using the other type of paper, and then combine those pages as you like. I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.