Any way to add "Notebook Layout" from MS Word 04?

I'm not familiar with Yojimbo. But the alllure of Notebook Layout in MS Word is it is a great way to organize a variety of topics/sections within one document. As described in earlier posts, it makes it EASY to shift from one section to another, as well as rearrange sections at will.

I'm surprised Apple didn't incorporate a similar layout/function as a template in Pages.

I second that question... I would love to find a way to use a "notebook layout view" in Pages. That alone and I could get rid of Office forever. I write large documents all the time using Word. As clunky as their version of the Notebook layout is (you have to 'trick' the system into backing off and letting you format as you want and the lined notebook pages are just a useless gimmick), it's extremely useful for organizing large, complex ideas.

I love the moveable tab feature especially. Research is non-linear. The notebook view lets me gather my details into tabbed sections and then, when I'm finished that phase, drag them around until they're ordered in a way that the whole document makes sense.

It seems so easy to recreate.

Anybody of anything similar in Pages '08? Right now, I'm finding the "Numbers" and the new "Keynote" more tempting than this, but a feature like that -- or even something remotely similar -- would put Pages over the top.

Allow me to pile on...I am trying very hard to flush Microsoft Office and go exclusively with iWork 08. BUT I extensively use Word's NOTEBOOK layout for much of my writing and record-keeping. Until Pages incorporates a better version of NOTEBOOK format, I will be stuck using Word. Help!

I don't understand the allure of the notebook view in Word. I use Yojimbo for clipping and note keeping and depending on the circumstances my book notes either get put into the book to be transcribed later or into my Treo and synced into Yojimbo later.

This is really disheartening that Pages has yet to incorporate this feature. Aftre a clean install of Leopard, I'm trying really hard not to have to put Office back on, so that I can exclusively use iWork. But being in college, the notebook feature is perfect for taking notes, or making an outline. Please give us this feature!

Wow... I haven't been back to this thread since August. While, sure, I agree with SMFinlay... on the other hand, it's heartening to see that so many other Mac users/wannabe Pages users are in the same boat. Sounds like we've got the start of a movement here!

I've tried doing this with other idea organizing programs, but it's just not the same. I love the power of writing into the sections... bouncing between tabs to paste between them... then moving the tabs into the right places and just clicking a button to go to the full document layout.

(Which, because it's Microsoft, then -- of course -- requires hand deleting all the sections, arbitrary notebook styles, etc... but even in a 36 page document, that only takes a few minutes.)

It's a shame not to see Apple adopt and improve upon the "Notebook Doc" layout that's been in Office for so long. I use it in lectures everyday. Funny thing is, I see other students doing the same thing on their Macs. Using bulleted lists in Pages is no comparison; not even worth the effort. I'll admit would throw out Office if I could just have a similar template, maybe in an upgrade or something.

The Mac has such good notebook programs, why would you use Word's anemic version of it. Look at Circus Ponies' Notebook and, if you only want a true outliner, try OmniOutliner, which is one of the best programs on any platform.

Scott

Okay Scott, I was ready to tell you that I've looked at all those options already... but, hmm, maybe I didn't look hard enough last time. I just went back to Circus Ponies and took a look at the download... and actually, it might do the trick.

I don't like the way you can't drag the actual tabs around (have to go to the divider or contents page). But otherwise, it's pretty nice. And exported files seem to open in both Word and Pages without a lot of messy code or inexplicable forced formatting (which was what I had learned to live with from Word's Notebook Layout).

Personally, I could do without the outlining since I just want to use the tabs to organize and write in plain text on each page, but fortunately in CP Notebook, that's one of the options -- to create a writing page -- again, not something found in Word's Notebook Layout.

I'll give CP Notebook a try. Just to observe, by the way, I write long-copy promotional pieces that require quite a bit of organizing. Before finding even Word's Notebook Layout, I had to devise my own way of jumping around in the document and keeping things organized. Word's Notebook Layout changed all that radically and literally allowed me to nearly double my income, thanks to improved productivity. So I'm looking forward to seeing what CP Notebook can do.

I'm assuming, too, that CP Notebook is more stable. I'm making that same assumption for Pages. Word's other drawback was the frequent crashing and stalling. I've taken to setting the autosaves and "save backup file" to Paranoid Mode. 😉

Thanks again for goading me to take a second look (for anyone else out there considering the same move, the key for me was to watch the video tutorials... the features CP Notebook has aren't self-evident when you're just toying around with it to see what it can do).

JF