Pages missing part of a document

Question

Pages missing part of a document

I am new to using Pages on macOS (though I've used it a lot in iOS). I've got a long document (500+ pages) and I'm experiencing an issue where part of some paragraphs are disappearing between the page breaks, making it look like something was deleted. The text is still there; I can select the area before and after the page break and when I copy and paste, the missing text is right where it should be, but I can't find a way to make the document show these missing lines between the page breaks. I was able to copy and paste the entire document to a new document which seems to have fixed the problem for now, but I'm concerned that it will happen again. Anyone know of a more permanent fix for this?

I'm using the 2020 MacBook Air with the i3 processor, and both the MacBook and Pages are fully up to date.

MacBook Air 13", macOS 10.15

Posted on May 2, 2020 9:57 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Joseph_S.

Community Specialist

May 3, 2020 2:39 PM in response to Nevermore1001

Hello Nevermore1001,

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities. Congratulations on your new MacBook Air! I understand that you have encountered an issue where a large document was not appearing correctly in Pages on your Mac. I use Pages a lot myself, so I'm happy to help.

Copying and pasting the text into another document was a great step to take; and one that I thought of while reading your message. Saving this new document and using it moving forward would be the steps I would take with my own documents.

If the issue reoccurs, you can see if the file opens on another device, and see how it appears there. You can also save the document as a PDF, and open it in Preview to see if the issue persists, or if it may just be the way Pages is displaying the document at that moment.

Whenever I am done using Pages on my Mac, I make sure to save the document (Command + S) before quitting the program (Command + Q). This ensures that the program is shut down until I need to use it again. This article will give you some more details on quitting apps, and how to select what you want your apps to do when you restart, shut down, or log out of your Mac: Quit apps on Mac.

All the best.

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Answer 2

May 3, 2020 7:39 PM in response to Joseph_S.

Thank you for your suggestions, Joseph! Upon further investigation, I discovered that this issue only happened when the document had been fully closed (like if I closed out Pages or if I shut down or restarted the MacBook); so long as the document stayed open (after I had copied and pasted over the same document and fixed the issue), the problem did not return. Copying and pasting into a new document seems to have completely resolved the issue entirely, as the new document can be closed and opened as often as I like and all of the text continues to appear.

I did try your recommendations to try to pinpoint the extent of the issue; the problematic document appeared correctly both in Pages for iPad and iPhone as well as in the Pages web app in iCloud.com. When I saved the document as a PDF, the problem of missing text did appear in the PDF version as well, which is making me think it was this document specifically and not Pages.

Just speculating now, but I am thinking the origins of the document may have had something to do with the issue; I originally created the document on the iPad, not on the MacBook, and prior to that the document had been transferred from Google Docs. I've had formatting issues in the past transferring a document from Google Docs to Microsoft Word, so I'm guessing/hoping that this was another formatting issue originating from Docs. Fingers crossed, but for right now, everything is working just fine now.

Thanks again!

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Answer 3

chris_g1

Community Specialist

May 4, 2020 10:03 AM in response to Nevermore1001

Hi Nevermore1001,

Thanks for letting us know that the new document is working without issue.

It sounds like you've found the cause of the problem with the formatting. Nice job isolating the issue down to documents which are imported into Pages from another format.

If you run into any other issues, be sure to post about them on the Apple Support Communities.

All the best!

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Pages missing part of a document

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