When I create a document in Pages, and then convert to Word, the Word document automatically hyphenates a lot of words. I want to know how to switch off the hyphenating setting in Word and have that setting saved as the default.
I can see how to switch off the hyphenation while in Word, but then when I save the document, it saves it in Pages, which puts me back to square one.
If you have hyphenation disabled in your Pages document on the Document panel, and in the Format panel : More tab : Hyphenation & Ligatures, then no hyphenation should be appearing in your Pages document either. The Pages translation of your document content to MS Word .docx via the Export To panel is a black box without any user controls over the outcome.
Open that resulting DOCX in Preview and see if hyphenation exists before you open it in MS Word. If hyphenation appears in Preview, and you have confirmed from the first paragraph that Pages hyphenation settings are disabled, then it is an undesireable side-effect of the export process, and there is nothing you can do about it, other than to use a different word processing application (e.g. LibreOffice Suite).
If Preview shows no hyphenation in the Word document, and upon opening in MS Word, the hyphenation is present, then I would recommend more scrutiny within Word's Preferences, or menu structure, for confirmation that it does not have hyphenation enabled.
Since Pages uses another translation process when opening an existing Word document, and if it detects hyphenation during that conversion into the .pages document format, then you will likely have a new Pages document with unplanned hyphenation enabled.
"When I then save that Word file to my Mac, it only saves it as a Pages document -- I'm not choosing to save as Pages, it reverts to Pages automatically. "
Do you mean the Word file, saved directly from Word, is saved with a name ending with the ".pages" extension?
Or is it saved with a ".docx" extension, but when double clicked, the file opens in Pages?
If it's the latter, take these steps:
Locate the file in Finder.
Click once on the file to select it, then press command-I to get Info.
In the Info panel, scroll down to the Open with section.
Set the Open with box to MS Word,
Click the Apply to all files of this type button.
Close the Info panel.
Double click the file name.
What is the result?
Regards,
Barry
You are welcome.
Whether you are billable, or associate some hourly cost on your time, this unwanted hyphenation issue has been expensive. When you just use MS Word (or the free LibreOffice), and not Pages, you are opening, editing, and saving Word documents in their native document format, and skip the entire translation quagmire introduced by Pages.
"I can see how to switch off the hyphenation while in Word, but then when I save the document, it saves it in Pages, which puts me back to square one."
Can you clarify this?
To my understanding, MS Word does not have the ability to Export/Save a Word document as a .pages file.
What are the steps in the process you use to cause this type of 'save'?
Regards,
Barry
It goes like this.
Yes, it is saved with a .docx extension, and when double-clicked it opens in Pages.
The Open With box only allows the following options:
Pages (default)
Archive Utility
Preview
Text/Edit
App store
Other
Thank you so much for the detailed answer! It was very helpful, except now I'm agreeing with your statement "it is an undesirable side-effect of the export process, and there is nothing you can do about it".
Thanks again and I appreciate the effort.
How to cancel hyphenation default setting in Word when converting to Word from Pages?
