Horizontal lines in Pages

Hello and welcome to Apple Support Communities, Didilor92!

I understand you're seeing horizontal lines when you paste links onto Pages for macOS. I'd be happy to help you troubleshoot.

Do you happen to have tracking enabled? Switch it off if you do, and see if the lines continue appearing: Pages for Mac: Track changes in a Pages document

Thank you for using Apple Support Communities.

Enjoy your day!

Barry,

Open any web page in Safari. Select some arbitrary text (or word) that is not already a link, and copy to the clipboard. The following AppleScript will make that text a hyperlink (from the current browser tab or window) and shove it back on the clipboard. When you paste that result into Pages v8.1 (and probably your v5.6.2), it should reproduce the functional blue hyperlink lines without their text content. AppleScript requires that the text string must be hex-encoded for this to work.

-- script to turn selected text copied to the clipboard with a hyperlink of the
-- URL from the current Safari browser tab. User pastes over previously selected
-- text in Safari, Mail, etc.
-- Reference: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11297555/applescript-create-url-anchor-text-pass-to-clipboard-as-url-type-data

use scripting additions

set theURL to ""
tell application "Safari"
	activate
	set theURL to the URL of the current tab of the front window
end tell

set theContent to the clipboard
set the clipboard to "<a href=\"" & theURL & "\" target=\"_blank\">" & theContent & "</a>"
-- xxd -r -p does not work here as the pipe target
set theHEX to do shell script "pbpaste | hexdump -ve '1/1 \"%.2x\"'"
if theHEX is "" then
	return
else
	run script "set the clipboard to «data HTML" & theHEX & "»"
end if
with timeout of 300 seconds
	display dialog "Paste from the clipboard into your Mail compose window..."
end timeout
return

Open Script Editor, copy/paste into it, and click Compile. Per the above, copy some text to the clipboard and then click the Run button in Script Editor. Paste into Pages. You will likely find that Paste and Match Style will just deliver the plain text of the hyperlink.

Meantime…

If you can write a set of instructions on how to repeat this behaviour, it is probably worth posting a bug report via the Feedback Channel.

Pages menu > Provide Pages Feedback > choose bug report.

B.

Hi TT,

What result do you get if you paste into the document body using Paste and Match Style?

Can you place the insertion point in the space occupied by the blue line?

If you select and copy the blue line, then paste that into a text box, what is the result?

Answers to these questions may help someone reach, or get closer to, a solution.

Regards,

Barry

PS: don't be in a hurry to mark posts as 'helpful' or 'solved'. Test first, then use the appropriate marker (if any).

B.

B, thanks for trying to help. Using the Paste and Match function doesn't work either. I still get the horizontal line. What's interesting is this: If I open up an older Pages file...one that I created a year ago and use as a running record of some of my work, I can copy and paste just fine. But if I open a brand new Pages file -- a document that is therefore generated after the most recent Pages update -- then the web address is rendered as a blue horizontal line, as I've shown before. Something happened within the Pages update, and I hope that someone who works on Apple's apps can sort it out.

FWIW, I know that marking something resolved should only be done if the response fixes the problem...unless I inadvertently did something, the response from becky_s22 was marked resolved by someone else.

"FWIW, I know that marking something resolved should only be done if the response fixes the problem...unless I inadvertently did something, the response from becky_s22 was marked resolved by someone else."

Must have been accidental, then. No one but you (or someone signed on as you, using your Apple ID and password) can spend the Solved and the two Helpfuls allocatd to the OP Original poster) of the question. Anyone else can click the 'helpful' box under a post, but their clicks won't activate the Helpful label, or cause the post to be moved to the top f the list position.

Back to your question:

Since pasting to an existing file, created by an earlier version of Pages 'works just fine,' I wonder what the result would be if you located an earlier document file in Finder, selected the file, pressed command-D to Duplicate it, then opened the duplicate and created your new document, including pasted in web addresses, then deleted the contents carried in by the duplication of the original, and did a Save as… of the new doc.

Might prove worth the effort as a stop-gap until a full solution comes along.

Regards,

Barry

Thanks for offering this suggestion, becky_s22. However, it does not solve the problem. When copying/pasting a website address (e.g., https://amazon.com) into a Pages document, it shows up as a horizontal line:

Track Changes is not on in Pages and I've checked and double-checked:

What is wacky is that if I add a text box, and then paste the website address into the text box, it comes through without difficulty:

I shouldn't have to do this. There's clearly something happening with Pages' ability to accept a pasted website address into a Pages document that needs to be addressed. None of this was a problem before the latest Pages update.