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Nicely done article. I use styles and custom templates all the time and they are definitely features not to miss! Much easier to use than in Word.

Thank you for the tips. For someone new to Mac they will come in handy. But imagine, a review for Pages '09. Three years without a version update. Pages: the new Hypercard.

On a positive note, I've tested the new InDesign and was delightfully surprised to find it speedy.

Success, on 03 August 2012 - 08:59 AM, said:

These are a great set of tips that a new user might not be aware of. I use Pages all the time and this was the first time I realized I could import styles from one document to another—that should save me a bit of time in the future (though I usually use a template pre-loaded with styles, so it won't be an everyday thing, which is probably why I never figured it out in the first place...)

That said, I would also love to see an update to Pages. Were it not for the periodic "okay, we're going to make sure this thing still works with the new OS!" updates, I would have long since thought Apple had abandoned it. I'm not asking for much in a new version—mostly just better handling of footnotes—but I'm starting to wonder how long I'll be waiting for that update. Apple events come and go with nary a reference to iWork. Every time the commentary is the same: "this is a developer/iPhone/iPad/OS X/whatever event—you can't expect them to announce an update to word processor there!" But, we're pushing on four years without an update.

Sigh.

I dunna know. I mastered Word when on PC, but the little boxes in Pages continually interfere with getting anything done. There. I said it and now I feel better.

Pages 4.2 under Mountain Lion has a serious bug. Its impossible to activate the Small Caps of fonts in the typography panel. Also the kerning does not function always. There is no such problem with TextEdit under Mountain Lion.

I couldn't find any way to reduce or get rid of the top and bottom margins. Wound up fiddling with the font size to make my list all fit on one page.

Maybe because I know Word, but I've tried using Pages as my primary word processor a few times and keep going back. I find things more cumbersome to format. For example, when I want a bullet list, there are all these options I have to find and set for spacing after the bullet, align the subquent lines, space between points, etc. Word just has all that set like I want automatically. Sure, I can appreciate the finer control but having to do that over and over on things like this example greatly increases time it takes to finish the project. Perhaps I just don't know what to look for to make it faster?

Useful tips! Perhaps you can tell me how to number the lines in pages when I write a story. Also, when someone sends me their material, their numbered lines do not show on Pages.
Another problem: I will italicize something in Pages but when I transfer it to e-mail, it will not make italics (never can get italics in e-mail).

johnnylundy, on 06 August 2012 - 10:10 AM, said:

Use the Inspector. First button at top left ("Document Inspector"), then click the Document button, then change the top and bottom margins. Easy.

tibgvt, on 07 August 2012 - 03:38 PM, said:

Sorry to say that there is no practical way to number lines. Pages doesn't support that. You can make a skinny text box and put numbers in it and have text wrap around it but that's not going to work if you change line spacing in your document. MS Word is better for this.

cphoffman42, on 03 August 2012 - 11:06 AM, said:

I'm with you! Hey Apple: let's give some attention to Pages (and Numbers, which needs it more).

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It does take a bit of getting used to, but one does figure out Pages' taxonomy of commands and controls. I find I now prefer it.

With regard to your question, open the Inspector and choose the first tab to the left, with the little dog-eared page icon. You can adjust--or simply choose not to use--headers and footers there. The checkboxes and controls are right below the margin settings.

Good luck.