Chapter 17

Desktop Publishing with Pages

In This Chapter

Creating a Pages document

Entering, editing, and formatting text

Inserting tables and graphics

Resizing objects

Checking your spelling

Printing Pages documents

Sharing your work

What’s the difference between word processing and desktop publishing? In a nutshell, it’s in how you design your document. Most folks use a word processor like an old-fashioned typewriter… much the way I’m using Microsoft Word right now. (Yawn.)

A desktop publishing application allows far more creativity in choosing where to place text, how to align graphics, and how to edit formats. In this chapter, I show you how to set your inner designer free from the tedious constraints of word processing! Whether you need a simple letter, a stunning brochure, or a multipage newsletter, Pages can handle the job with ease — and you’ll be surprised at how simple it is to use.

Creating a New Pages Document

To create a new Pages document, follow these steps:

1. Click the Pages icon on the Dock.

   If the Pages icon doesn’t appear on your Dock, click the Launchpad icon and then click the Pages icon (which looks like a document and pen). If you haven’t installed the three iWork applications yet — Pages, Numbers, and Keynote — click the App Store icon in your Dock and download them directly!

2. Click the New Document button in the lower-left corner of the Open dialog.

   Pages displays the Template Chooser window shown in Figure 17-1.

   You can also create a new Pages document at any time from the File menu. Just click New to display the Template Chooser window.

   

3. In the list to the left, click the type of document you want to create.

   The thumbnails on the right are updated with templates that match your choice.

4. Click the template that most closely matches your needs.
5. Click the Choose button to open a new document in the template you selected.

Open an Existing Pages Document

Of course, you can always open a Pages document from a Finder window. Just double-click the document icon. (The All My Files location in the Finder window Sidebar makes it easy to track down a document.) You can also open a Pages document from within the program. Follow these steps:

1. Launch Pages as I describe in the previous section.
2. Press +O to display the Open dialog.

   The Open dialog operates much the same as a Finder window in Icon, List, or Column view mode. To open a document that you’ve already saved in your iCloud folder, click the iCloud button in the top-left corner of the Open dialog. To open a document on your hard drive or network, click the On My Mac button.

3. Click the desired drive in the Devices list at the left of the dialog and then click folders and subfolders until you locate the Pages document.

   You can also click in the Search box at the top of the Open dialog and type in a portion of the document name or its contents.

   If you’re using Icon view mode (or you’re displaying the Preview column in Column view mode), you can hover your cursor over a document thumbnail and quickly flip through the different pages by clicking on the left and right arrows that appear. This “find” feature can help you identify a particular Pages document without even opening it

4. Double-click the thumbnail (or filename) to load it.

If you want to open a Pages document that you’ve edited in the recent past, things get even easier! Just choose File⇒Open Recent, and you can open the document with a single click from the submenu that appears.

Saving Your Work

Pages fully supports the Mavericks Auto-Save feature, but you may feel the need to manually save your work after you finish a significant edit (or if you need to take a break while designing). If you’re editing a document that has already been saved at least once, a new version of the document is saved to its current location — and you can immediately continue your work.

If, however, you’re working on a new document that hasn’t previously been saved, follow these steps to save it:

1. With the Pages document open, press +S.
2. Type a filename for your new document.
3. Open the Where pop-up menu and choose a location to save the document.

   Note that Pages defaults to your iCloud folder as the target location — this way, you can open and edit your Pages document on any Mac or iOS device that shares the same Apple ID. Alternatively, click the button sporting the down arrow to expand the Save As sheet. This allows you to navigate to a different location on your hard drive or network, or to create a new folder to store this Pages project.

4. Click Save.

You can create a version of a Pages document by choosing File⇒Save. To revert the current document to an older version, choose File⇒Revert To. Pages gives you the option of reverting to the last saved version, or you can click Browse All Versions to choose from multiple versions of the document.

Touring the Pages Window

Before you dive into any real work, let me show you around the Pages window! You’ll find the following major components and controls, as shown in Figure 17-2:

• Pages list: This thumbnail list displays all the pages you’ve created within your document. (For a single-page document, of course, the Page list will contain only a single thumbnail.) You can switch instantly between different pages in your document by clicking the desired thumbnail in the list. If the list isn’t visible, click the View button at the left side of the Pages toolbar and click Show Page Thumbnails.
• Layout pane: This section takes up most of the Pages window — it’s where you design and edit each page in your document.
• Toolbar: Yep, Pages has its own toolbar. The toolbar keeps all the most common application controls within easy, one-click reach.
• Format Drawer: This window extension allows you to quickly switch the appearance of selected paragraphs, characters, and lists. You can hide and display the Format Drawer by clicking the Format button on the toolbar.

Entering and Editing Text

If you’ve used a modern word processing program, you’ll feel right at home typing within Pages. The bar-shaped text cursor, which looks like a capital letter I, indicates where the text you enter will appear in a Pages document. To enter text, simply begin typing. To edit existing text in your Pages document, select and highlight the text. As you type, Pages replaces the existing text. You can delete text by clicking and dragging across the characters to highlight them; then press Delete.

Using Text and Graphics Boxes

Within Pages, text and graphics appear in boxes, which can be resized by clicking and dragging one of the handles that appear around the edges of the box. (Click the box to select it and then hover your cursor over one of the square handles, and you’ll see that it changes to a double-sided arrow, indicating that Pages is ready to resize the box.)

You can also move a box, including all the stuff it contains, to another location within the Layout pane. Click in the center of the box and drag the box to the desired spot. Note that Pages displays yellow alignment lines to help you align the box with other elements around it (or with regular divisions of the page, such as the vertical center of a poster or flyer). Figure 17-3 illustrates a box containing text that I’m moving; note the vertical and horizontal alignment lines that automatically appear.

To select text or graphics within a box, you must first click the box to select it and then double-click the line of text or the graphic that you want to change.

The Three Amigos: Cut, Copy, and Paste

“Hang on, Mark, you’ve covered moving stuff, but what if you want to copy a block of text or a photo to a second location? Or how about cutting something from a document open in another application?” Good questions, dear reader! That’s when you can call on the power of the cut, copy, and paste features within Pages. The next few sections explain how you do these actions.

Cutting stuff

Cutting selected text or graphics removes it from your Pages document and places that material on your Clipboard. (Think of the Clipboard as a holding area for snippets of text and graphics that you want to manipulate.) To cut text or graphics, select some material and choose Edit⇒Cut or press +X.

Copying text and images

When you copy text or graphics, the original selection remains untouched, but a copy of the selection is placed on the Clipboard. Select some text or graphics and choose Edit⇒Copy or press +C. To copy selected items by dragging, hold down the Option key while you drag the items to their destination.

If you cut or copy a new selection on to the Clipboard, it erases what was there. In other words, the Clipboard holds only the latest material you cut or copied.

Pasting from the Clipboard

Are you wondering what you can do with the stuff that’s stored in your Clipboard? Pasting the contents of the Clipboard places the material at the current location of the insertion cursor.

You must paste the contents before you cut or copy again to avoid losing what’s on the Clipboard.

To paste the Clipboard contents, click the insertion cursor at the location you want and choose Edit⇒Paste or press +V.

Formatting Text the Easy Way

If you feel that some (or all) of the text in your Pages document needs a facelift, you can format that text any way you like. Formatting lets you change the color, font family, character size, and attributes as necessary.

After the text is selected, you can apply basic formatting in two ways:

• Use the Format Drawer. The Format Drawer appears at the right side of the Pages window, as shown in Figure 17-2, and the controls it displays will vary according to the selection you’ve made. (Click the Format button on the toolbar, which looks like a tiny blue paintbrush, to display and hide the drawer.) Click to select a font control to display a pop-up menu and then click your choice. For example, open the Font Family pop-up menu to change the font family from vanilla Arial to a more daring font. You can also select characteristics, such as the text’s paragraph style, or choose italicizing or bolding. The Format Drawer also provides buttons for both vertical and horizontal text alignment.
• Use the Format menu. Most controls displayed within the Format Drawer are also available from the Format menu. Click Format and hover the mouse cursor over the Font menu item, and you can then apply bolding, italicizing, and underlining to the selected text. You can also make the text bigger or smaller. To change the alignment from the Format menu, click Format and hover the mouse cursor over the Text menu item.

Adding a Spiffy Table

In the world of word processing, a table is a grid that holds text and graphics for easy comparison. You can create a custom table layout within Pages with a few simple clicks.

Follow these steps:

1. Click the insertion cursor at the location where you want the table to appear.
2. Click the Table button on the Pages toolbar.

   Pages displays thumbnail images of different table styles. You have a selection of colors, and some tables also include highlighted rows and columns, as shown in Figure 17-4. Use the left and right buttons to display different style thumbnails until you find the one that’s closest to the table you need.

   Don’t worry if the style isn’t exactly right. You can always change the layout by selecting the table and displaying the Format Drawer, where you can fine-tune all sorts of font, color, grid, and border options.

   

3. Click the style thumbnail to insert the table.

   If you need to change the number of rows or columns in your table, Pages makes it easy! To add or delete rows or columns directly from the table, select it and then click the row and column buttons that appear (each of which bears an equal sign, as shown in Figure 17-4).

4. Click within a cell in the table to enter text.

   The table cell automatically resizes and “wraps” the text you enter to fit.

   You can paste material from the Clipboard into a table. See the earlier section “Pasting from the Clipboard” for details on pasting.

Here are a few pointers on how to dress up your table and make its data more attractive or readable:

• Change the borders on a selected cell. Open the Format Drawer, click the Cell tab, and then click the Border section.

  Select a range of multiple cells in a table by holding down Shift as you click. Hold down and click to select multiple cells that aren’t contiguous.

• Add a background color to selected cells or fill them with an image for a background. Click the Cell tab and then click the Fill section in the Format Drawer and choose a type of background.

Adding Alluring Photos

You can choose between two methods of adding a picture within your Pages document:

• As a floating object: You place the image in a particular spot, and it doesn’t move even if you make changes to the text.
• As an inline object: The image flows with the surrounding text as you make layout changes.

To add a floating object, drag an image file from a Finder window and place it at the spot you want within your document. Alternatively, you can click the Media button on the toolbar, click Photos, navigate to the location where the file is saved, and click the image thumbnail. Figure 17-5 illustrates the Media Browser in action.

Note that a floating object (such as a shape or an image) can be sent to the background, where text will not wrap around it. To bring a background object back as a regular floating object, click the object to select it and choose Arrange⇒Bring to Front. (More about background objects later in this chapter.)

To add an inline object, hold down the key as you drag an image file from a Finder window and place it where you want within your document. You can also click the Media toolbar button and click Photos to display the Media Browser. Navigate to the location where the file is saved, hold down the key, and drag the image thumbnail to the spot where you want it in the document.

To resize an image object, click the image to select it and then drag one of the selection handles that appear along the border of the image. (The handles look like tiny squares.) The side-selection handles drag only that edge of the frame. The corner-selection handles resize both adjoining edges of the selection frame. Hold down the Shift key so that the vertical and horizontal proportions remain fixed.

Adding a Background Shape

To add a shape (such as a rectangle or circle) as a background for your text, follow these steps:

1. Click the insertion cursor in the location you want.
2. Click the Shape button on the Pages toolbar and choose a shape.

   The shape appears in your document.

3. Click the center of the shape and drag it to a new spot.

   Shapes can be resized or moved in the same manner as image boxes. See the preceding section.

You can type over a shape set as a background. Before you do, though, select the shape and choose Arrange⇒Send to Back.

Are You Sure about That Spelling?

Pages can check spelling as you type (the default setting) or check it after you complete your document. If you find automatic spell-checking distracting, you should definitely pick the latter method.

As my technical editor reminds us, spell-checking confirms only that a word is correctly spelled, not that it’s the right word for the job! If you’ve ever “red” a document that someone else “rote,” you “no” what he means.

To check spelling as you type, follow these steps:

1. Click the Edit menu and hover the cursor over the Spelling and Grammar menu item.
2. Choose Check Spelling While Typing from the submenu that appears.

   If a possible misspelling is found, Pages underlines the word with a red, dashed line.

3. Right-click the word to choose a possible correct spelling from the list or choose Ignore Spelling if it’s spelled correctly.

To turn off automatic spell-checking, click the Check Spelling While Typing menu item again to deselect it.

To check spelling manually, follow these steps:

1. Click within the document to place the text insertion cursor where the spell check should begin.
2. Click Edit and hover the cursor over the Spelling and Grammar menu item; then choose Check Document Now from the submenu that appears.
3. Right-click any possible misspellings and choose the correct spelling, or choose Ignore Spelling if the word is spelled correctly.

Printing Your Pages Documents

Ready to start the presses? You can print your Pages document on real paper, of course, but don’t forget that you can also save a tree by creating an electronic, PDF-format document instead of a printout. You’ll find the PDF button within the standard Mavericks Print dialog.

To print your Pages document on old-fashioned paper, follow these steps:

1. Within Pages, choose File⇒Print.

   Pages displays the Print sheet.

2. Click in the Copies field and enter the number of copies you need.
3. Select the pages to print.
   • To print the entire document, select All.
   • To print a range of selected pages, select the From radio button and then enter the starting and ending pages.
4. Click the Print button to send the document to your printer.

Sharing That Poster with Others

Besides printing — which is, after all, so very passé these days — you can choose to share your Pages document electronically in a number of ways:

• Sharing on iCloud: If you stored your new masterpiece in your iCloud folder, you can send a link to the finished document in a number of different ways. Click the Share button on the Pages toolbar, and then hover your cursor over the Share Link via iCloud item to send the link through Mail, Messages, Twitter, or Facebook. The recipient of the link can easily view your document with a single click!
• Sending a Copy: If you’d prefer to send a copy of the actual document — which the recipient can open using Pages on their own Mac or iOS device — click Share on the toolbar, and then hover your cursor over the Send a Copy item. You can send the document via Mail or Messages, or make it available through AirDrop (if the recipient is within the range of your iMac’s Wi-Fi signal). If you decide to send your Pages document as an e-mail attachment, don’t forget that most ISPs have a maximum message size. If your document is too large, it will likely be rejected by your mail server.
• Exporting: You’re not limited to sharing over that Internet thing! Pages can also export your work directly to your drive in one of five different formats: a PDF document, a Word document, an ePub file (for use with electronic book apps like iBooks), a document compatible with the previous version of Pages, or even plain text. (Remember when everything was in plain text?) Choose File⇒Export To and pick your format, and Pages displays any options you can set for that format. When you’re ready, click Next and then select the location where Pages should save the file. Click Export and sit back while your favorite desktop publishing application does all the work.

  If the recipient of your document doesn’t need to edit your work, I recommend PDF format, which will keep your document as close to how it appears in Pages as possible.