I use the Find and Replace function quite frequently for my work, and with this new update, it no longer works. The Find / Find and Replace window appears, but it doesn't actually find (or highlight) the word, even though it is absolutely within the document. And then of course, it will not replace it, either. Any solutions?
MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 11.5
With all respect UncleFlinsky, I followed your advice and discovered I could fix this problem in one minute:
fix it now in less than one minute
the problem occurs when the computer is shut down with open documents and the option "reopen windows when logging back in" is chosen on shut down. each document that is "reopened" automatically will no longer be able to use find
With all respect UncleFlinsky, I followed your advice and discovered I could fix this problem in one minute:
fix it now in less than one minute
the problem occurs when the computer is shut down with open documents and the option "reopen windows when logging back in" is chosen on shut down. each document that is "reopened" automatically will no longer be able to use find
Okay, I fixed this problem after a couple of hours.
First, I quit out of everything and then restarted my computer.
Next, I opened Pages and closed every single open document.
Next, I quit Pages again and restarted.
Next, I opened pages and then only one document. Then the find feature worked again.
I'm currently running MasOS Big Sur, 11.6
The trigger is related to what you were doing the last time you shut down your computer, and as far as I can tell, nothing to do with what you are currently doing.
Specifically,
if you leave a a pages document up and running so that it is available immediately after you boot up your computer,
you will get this error.
It has, as far as I can tell, nothing to do with other applications you might have been running, etc.
The simple solution is close out any Pages that are on the screen when you shut down. Next time you log in you'll have to bring that page back up, but the find function should work.
Bill
Find does not work on documents that were open before the upgrade. Closing the document and opening it afresh via Open Recent makes it start working. That's all I did - no need to close other documents.
I also work on very large files, but I don't think the size of the files is the issue, as for me the problem occurs in small files fas well.
The trigger for the problem is leaving a pages document open when you log out. When you return say after a restart, find does not work for that file. I haven't checked explicitly but it probably won't work on newly opened file either.
But the trigger is leaving a document open when you shut down.
There are two solutions
Either way find magically works again.
When using the Find function, when you have the search box open, to the left is a pull down box (with the settings icon). All choices are selected. If you want to find part of a word or an entire word de-select Whole Word and Match Case and it suddenly works!
Hey all,
I've been struggling with this same issue for months, and just had an Apple Tech Support Person (Thanks, Josh!) help me find the true glitch and fix it!
UncleFlinsky's answer below was not a fix for me. But Josh figured out that some of my individual Pages documents had gotten corrupted somehow, leading to the Find/Replace feature not working. The solution was to Select All-Copy-Paste to a new Pages document, and in the new document, Find/Replace works perfectly!
In my work flow, I do a lot of Duplication (aka "Save As") to start a new document with an existing template. I believe this is what led to the corruption and the Find/Replace ceasing to work. All of the documents that have had the Find/Replace feature break are ones that had been duplicated multiple times.
Hope this is helpful to someone else!
It's now August 2022, and I just want to reiterate that the Search/Find feature in Pages 11.2 is still defective. This is an essential word processing function, and it is very disappointing that Apple has not fixed it.
To clarify - when I open a Pages document, the feature does work, but only for a short while. If I come back to the document later it no longer works. The workaround is, whenever I need to search for a word within a Pages document, I have to close the document, reopen it, and perform the search immedicately.
Had the same issue with the find option not working. I've closed all the active windows, quit the Pages. Then, I opened Pages and my most recent document and the feature is working again. Weird bug.
A lingering issue with Pages Find/Replace is that it may show no matches until you click the right-most > button, and then suddenly, it wakes up and highlights the found items. Or randomly, it shows two matches in your exact sentence without the need to help it with that > button. I just now experienced both kinds of results with the Find/Replace and Pages v11.2.
When Whole Words is selected, then it finds both of these words in your example sentence. With whole words deselected, it does not find squat until one clicks the > button.
After reading this very helpful thread, I quit Pages (I only had one document open) then reopened that document and the Find function worked. But this is clearly something Apple should fix and quickly. The reports of this bug go back several weeks and that is too long to let this important feature go unfixed.
I had the same problem. I solved it by making a new document with the same content (with Command + A, Command + C in the original document and Command + V in the new document). The Find feature worked normally on the new document.
That is not my experience. My experience is that you can not leave a Pages document open when you shutdown.
If you do leave one open, the find function does not work, and you have to exit and restart pages to get it to work.
Yes its a bug, and annoying, but the workaround is not onerous, at least for me.
I have tried this and it worked. Thanks. I mean that if Find quit working, I simply closed that document and then reopened the same document and then Find worked again. I did not have to close Pages or restart my computer or anything. This is a bug. I hope everyone reports it to Apple. If enough people do that, then maybe it might actually get fixed. It shouldn’t have to have a workaround like this. It should just work. It used to.
This solution worked for me. I made a slight modification to the instructions:
First, I quit out of everything and then restarted my computer.
Next, I opened Pages and closed every single open document.
Next, I quit Pages again and restarted computer.
Next, I opened pages and then only one document. Then the find feature worked again.
Pages 11.2 - Find and Replace Not Working
