Tips To Being More Productive Using Mac Pages

Learn how to be more productive when writing in Pages by using styles, the left sidebar, sections, dictation and more.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you some tips for being more productive when using Pages. 
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Let's say you're using Pages in word processing mode to write something. Maybe an article, a report, or a whole novel. There are a lot of things that you can do to make yourself more productive. For instance, let's say you start a new document and you begin writing. A lot of times people right here will stop and try to adjust things like the font right when they should actually be concentrating on writing. So let's say you don't bother at all about the font or the style or anything and you just write. So now you've written a whole bunch here and the thing is that at some point you just decide you do want to actually pay attention to the font. You can just change the style. You can go to this first paragraph here. Notice that every paragraph, no matter which one I put the cursor in, is Body Text. So all I need to do is change the text of one of these paragraphs, let's say the first one, make it a little bit bigger and let's use a different font like this, and then I can go and simple Update. This will update the Body Font meaning that all the other paragraphs using the body font will now use that. I can continue to change that again. So if that one isn't right I can change to this one, for instance, and Update. Then all the paragraphs will change. So you don't have to decide on a font, size, style, and all of that at the beginning. Just get to writing knowing that you can change the style for paragraphs later on. 
Now alternatively you may want to change at the beginning but not because it's how you want the text to look when you're finished with the document. But it is what is best for you as a writer. So, for instance, you could select all this text, I'll just do Command A, and I may want to make it much bigger and easier for me to read and maybe choose a font that I find easier to see on the screen. Then write like that. After I'm done I can go and just select, say, one paragraph body text there and I can change that to what I want and this could be the font I want for printing it out. Then Update the body style and it will update the entire document. This way I didn't have to write in a font I didn't like and I didn't have to print or create a pdf in a font that I only liked for writing on the screen.
Another thing I like to do when writing is to have more separation between paragraphs. So you could do that by, say, putting the cursor in the first paragraph somewhere and then under Format, Style I can change the amount before or after the paragraph. I'll do after. I'll add, say, eight points there. This creates a nice space between two paragraphs. Then I'll Update the Body Text. So I can more easily see each paragraph as I'm writing. But then when I'm done if I don't want that in the final document I can just put the cursor in the first paragraph there, I can take that away, and then Update BodyText and it goes away for all of those paragraphs.
Now if you want to add Headings to different parts, say different chapters, you may be tempted to do that by just adding a separate line, like this. So you can see here I've just got  this on a separate line. But later on, if you want to go and change the style of that, well this is just a body paragraph just like the ne xt one is and the one after that. So it's useful when you're doing this right from the very beginning to for that paragraph with just the chapter name or heading or whatever it is, to set it to one of these styles. Don't worry about how it looks. This may not be how you want it to look later on. But if you just use that each time that you add a new heading, like this, then later on you can decide on the style by selecting this paragraph here and then changing it to what you want. I'll make this, say, just a dark blue and maybe also make it a different font, like that, and now if I Update Heading notice here for the next chapter, since that is the same paragraph style when I updated, it updates this one as well and this one. So as long as I remember to make all of these lines the Heading Style, I can set the style later on. It's just that if I don't do that they are all just going to be body text and I'm going to have to go and select each one and change its style or manually change the font and size. 
Also, one last thing about Styles. You can also use them for individual words or phrases. So, for instance, if you wanted to have certain words called out in your text you can select them and you can go down to Character Styles here and you can choose one of these, like Emphasis, or use the Plus button to create something new. All you need to do to create something new is select it and then set it to something. Like I'll just make it Bold for now. Then I'll go to Character Styles, click the Plus button and I'll make this, say, Glossary Term like that. Now I can make another piece of text, also a Glossary Term. Then the cool thing is I don't have to think about how these are going to look when I'm done. I just finish writing and then I can select one of them, change it to something else, like let's make them all a different color like that, and then I can Update Glossary Term. Notice how it changes it here as well. This becomes really easy because I remembered each time to actually set it as a character style even though I didn't know what the final style for that would be. 
So now that I've used Styles a little bit notice here in this document I've got something specific set for Heading that's different than the default template. The same thing for Body Text. It's larger. I've even got some character styling in here as well. Let's say I want to use this all the time. I'll find that when I create a new Pages document that this new document has Body Style in the old way and also Heading in the old way. It doesn't carry over from document to document. I can fix that by creating my own Template. So I've got this document here that has everything set how I want. So all I need to do now is go to File and then let me duplicate this. So now I've got a new version of this. I'm going to call this My Template, like that. I'm going to then select all the text, Command A, and Delete it all so I have a new document that I'm starting off. I've even got the first line here set as Heading like I may want it to be. Then I can go here to File, and then Save As Template. I'm going to Add To Template Chooser and I'm going to set this to My Template right here or I can call it My Blank Word Processing Document. Like that. Now when I want to create a new document I just go to File, New and from the Template Chooser I choose this rather than the regular blank template. Then notice here I've got the Heading set like I want. I've got Body Text set like I want. I've even got the Character Style of Glossary Term there. It will remember other things in this template as well. So you don't have to start from scratch setting up all of the different styles. 
If you find that you're always just using that and not choosing any of these other templates you can go into Pages Settings and then in here you can say for New Documents use template and then set it to be this template that you've chosen and now when you select File, New it just automatically does that. You can still use other templates by going to File, hold down the Option Key and New changes to New From Template Chooser. Now you can use one of these other ones if you occasionally need to. 
Now when you have a long document and you've added Headings here, like these chapters, it can be useful to be able to jump from chapter to chapter. In the Sidebar here you can click here and you can see that there is a Table of Contents Sidebar. If you select that it will show you a Table of Contents that's not included in the document if you print it or create a pdf. But you can use these to jump around to the different parts of your document. Click Edit here and you can choose which of the styles get included in this Table of Contents. 
Now another thing you can do is go to Page Thumbnails. For word processing this makes it easy to jump around by pages. But you can't rearrange the pages because it is one continuous flowing document. However, you can rearrange sections. So at the beginning of the second chapter here I'm going to insert a Section Break. I'm going to do the same thing at the beginning of the next chapter. Insert a section break. Now I've got different sections and sections can be moved around. Let me go and actually add more text here to these different sections. Like I'll add a little at the end of Chapter Two and I'll add a little to the end of Chapter One. So you can see here it's two pages. This is the first section. Two pages of the second section and one page of the third section. If I did want to move this around I can actually grab the first page of this section, drag and put it here. Now section two, which has Chapter Two, comes first. I moved Chapter One after it. If you have different ideas and you want to play around with where they go add Section Breaks and now you can Drag and Drop in the Page Thumbnails Sidebar. 
Now let's say you've imported an image into your document and you've taken the time to make it a certain size. You've maybe added a border to it, maybe even a shadow. You've make other adjustments as well. Now you want to do that again. You want to have an image that looks just like that but further down in the document. But you find that when you go further down the document and then go to Import and Image for this that the image will start off at this starting point here and you've got to reapply all those changes. You don't need to do that. If you want it to look pretty much the same as this you can simply select this image here, Copy it, I'm going to go down to here and Paste. You can see how it appears there looking pretty much the same. Now you can go to Image and Replace. You've got to choose a file. Not something from the Photos Library when you do it that way. Then select what you want to replace it with and you can see how it kept everything. So you can really quickly have lots of images that follow the same style. 
Now you may know about Text Replacements. If you go to System Settings and then you go to Keyboard. You can go to Text Replacement. These are things where you can type something and it gets replaced with something else. Even a long piece of text like this. But Pages has its own set of Text Replacements. So if you go to Pages, Settings and you go to Auto Correction there is a set of replacements here. It works the same way. But these will only be present in Pages. 
Now the thing that might be standing in your way of productivity in Pages might be your typing speed. You can use Dictation on your Mac. It works pretty well. There are actually two types of dictation. So, the first type you enable by going to System Settings and then going to Keyboard and then here you've got Dictation. You can turn it On and you can set how it starts. So here pressing the Control Key twice. I can do that and then type something. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog period. If this works for you, great. But there's an even more powerful version of Dictation. 
For this in System Settings go not to Keyboard but to Accessibility. Then look for Voice Control. Voice Control does a lot of different things. One of the things it does is Dictation. When you turn it On you'll see something appear up here and you can set it to Stop Listening and Start Listening up here. So, let's go and try that and I'll give an example of how this is more powerful. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog period. Replace brown with green. Four. So you can see how Voice Control is a lot more complex. There's a lot more you can do. In System Settings you can click on the Command here and you can see all these different Commands and there's a whole bunch of them that have to do with moving the cursor with dictation in general, with Text Selection, with Text Navigation, and all of that. So you can see all of these different ones like Correct and Copy and Paste and all of this that can be done with Voice Control that can't be done with standard dictation. 
So a few more tips. If you're writing you may find that you hit a point where you're not sure what you want to write and you want to just move on. So you may add some notes to yourself in the text. Instead of adding them in the text you can add Comments. So Pages has all these advanced tracking functions. But for Comments you don't need that. You can just put the text cursor somewhere like this, click Comment, and then Add something here. It will note that there is a comment there. You can go back to it later. Click on it and just see the comment. So it's a good way to just make a little note for something to go back to later and then be able to move on with your writing. 
In the Toolbar here you've got all of these different buttons but there are more that you can add. If you go to View and then Customize Toolbar you can add more buttons here to the top. So you can highly customize these, for instance, if you have links a lot in your text you can add a button for Links. If you rarely ever use Shapes you can drag that away to make more room. If you ever just want to go back to the default set you can just drag this large item in and it will change it all to the defaults. 
One last tip is don't be afraid to use a second Pages document while writing. So you can create a new one, like this, and use this as a way to save things. Like, for instance, if I'm thinking maybe I don't want to use this paragraph I can cut it here and then switch to this document and paste it in. Then maybe have a little odds and ends and bits and pieces, maybe even write something here I know I'm going to use later and just save it in this second document. Maybe name it something similar to your original document and save it in the same place. It's really handy to go back and forth. You can, of course, if you've got more screen space have both on the screen at the same time or you can go and merge the windows like this and have both documents each in its own tab and easy to switch between. 
So there's some productivity tips for using Pages. Hope you found this useful. Thanks  for watching.

Comments: 14 Responses to “Tips To Being More Productive Using Mac Pages”

Bruce

9 months ago

I thought I knew about using styles in Pages. Sir, I stand corrected. I did not know about Character Styles and that is so handy! And watching how you integrate with the other elements makes me want to write! You are the master, I am your humble student. Thank you!

Jill

This video was the best ever. Loved how to get dictation to work for those of us that think faster then type. I work in Adobe Indesign, I wish you were doing updates for that program. Been using your tips for many many years.
thank you. Jill

Peggy

I've been working on a manuscript and your tips will make things so much easier! I didn't know about character styles, nor did I know that I could have multiple pages open in tabs. I loved learning how to create my own template to open each time--that alone will save me a great deal of time. Thanks!

Jack

Great video. Helps me a lot. Thanks!

Roger Rohweder

This year I have moved completely away from Word and Excel to pages and numbers. I'm becoming more comfortable in both, but these hints are very valuable for me to gain productivity. Thank you!

Lorraine

I have been using Pages for many years, but only knew about half the tips you provided in this video. I also appreciate the clear way that you explain the tips and the clarity of the shots of your computer screen in the video. Thanks Gary

Sheldon

Thanks bunches

John Russell

I'm slowly becoming aware that my old Appleworks habits are just that—old. Thanks for these very helpful tips.

John

This is the most helpful video I've ever seen for Pages.

Kathy

8 months ago

This was so useful! Lots of good tips that I'll definitely use, thanks!

Liz

7 months ago

I don't have the "UPDATE" against my styles like you do on Pages - can you tell why this might be? Love your videos teaching us all new things - thank you

Gary Rosenzweig

Liz: To have it as an option you'd need to select an entire paragraph and make a change to the style, like bold or a different font or size. It won't appear if you have only part of a paragraph selected or changed.

margaret

1 month ago

I hope it is not too late to ask a question on this video? how do you open and new Pages window - I can only get it to open a new tab.
Thanks
Margaret

Margaret: Sounds like you turned on: System Settings, Desktop & Dock, Prefer tabs when opening documents. You can turn that off. Or, leave it on and just drag the tab by the top tab part out of the window to create a new window. You can also Control+click the top of the tab and there is an option to move it to a new window.