Pages 11.2 - Find and Replace Not Working

No need to quit pages in my experience. You just have to close and reopen the document and search will work for a while. Be sure you report this annoying bug to Provide Pages Feedback under the Pages icon at the top left. Maybe Apple will notice if they're not busy raking in billions.

Thanks for that. Has this problem reappeared for anyone after applying this "Apple recommended" fix? I ask because I want to keep 5-10 pages documents open at a time. I have plenty of memory and processors, just want to be able to work efficiently.

The solution is indeed transient: find fails immediately after restarting the computer with documents left open in Pages.

It looks like Pages's state is being corrupted as a result of the normal operation of closing the app with open documents.

It worked! I followed the suggestions just like UncleFlinsky listed, and once I did, my search and find started functioning. I had turned my computer off and on dozens of times before, but somehow, with turning the computer off and on twice without trying to use Pages, the search and find function returned. Thank you, UncleFlinsky!

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.

So you open one document only, and then close/reopen when it happens? It seems like with multiple docs open, it breaks for all the docs

I’d be interested if close/reopen one doc works, with multiple docs open after you’ve had it restore the windows on restart. I seem to notice it coming up broken after restart with docs open.

I use it to get to a bunch of lab notebooks pertaining to different experiments that are running concurrently. Maybe I should use notes, but then I can’t do lab notebook style page headers.

I skipped your first step, because I had already restarted my Mac several times. I closed each document in Pages, quit Pages, and then opened it again, and just opened one document, and finally, my search was working again.

Running Monterey 12.2 on an MBP 16-inch, 2021 M1 Pro. I think my problem started about a month into this new Mac.

I've been having this problem for a while too and just found this thread.

Here we are in Feb 2022 and it's still not fixed in Pages.

I'm not going to restart and jump through hoops because it's too disruptive for my overall workflow.

I've found that it works sometimes and not others. I haven't found any logic to its dysfunctionality.

I tried copying and pasting a document to a new one and then Find worked - but not always - and not always when reopening the new one.

It's a bug.

Get on it Apple.

Give us a quicker fix.

It's been too long now.

Right.   This doesn’t work:

Quit pages

Restart

Open Pages; close all documents; quit Pages

Open Pages and select the document to open 

 nor does this work:  

Use "Duplicate" under "File" to make a new copy of your document. Find and Replace should work in the new document.

The only thing that works for me every time is to simply close the document and reopen it from Open Recent. It'll work for a while before you notice Find is no longer working and you must do that again.

MacBook Air M1 2020

MacOS 12.2.1

Pages for Mac 11.2 (7032.0.145)

Find and Find & Replace are not working on the above listed system.

this function appears to not recognize that there is an open document ready to be searched.

It's hard to believe Apple is not addressing this bug in a most basic function.

I've experienced the same problem. I work on 300-450 page manuscripts where FIND is essential. The size of my files may be part of the problem as I don't experience FIND quitting on me on files of a few pages or less; I also don't work on them for near as long and collect as many saves, etc..

I talked with a senior advisor from Creative Products (or whatever they call it) at Apple and he confirmed they know about the issue, but haven't fixed it. They are still trying to collect data (logs and screen actions) from users experiencing this problem. Call APPLECARE when FIND quits and have them collect your non-working data logs, etc. for their Pages engineers. Might help accelerate a fix.

My current workaround has been to DUPLICATE my file where FIND/FIND & REPLACE are not working and throw away the non-working file version. It's not a permanent solution but it works for a while until it doesn't, then I do it again.

Definitely a bug. I'm happy that some users don't experience this problem. For those of us who do, try just closing and reopening the document. That's working a treat me. For me, I don't have to close everything down, reboot, etc.

That's interesting. I, however, never shut down, yet the problem of FIND quitting persists. I do however put my computer to Sleep all the time with the file open and sitting in the dock. I wonder if that has the same effect as shutting down. I'll try closing the file and Pages when I place the computer in Sleep mode and see what happens.

Great observation and feedback. Thanks!

Closed the file and Quit Pages before putting the computer to Sleep or Shutting Down. That only temporarily fixes the problem of Find/Find & Replace failing to work. The fix lasts about as long as Duplicating the File and throwing the old one away does: not very long, day or two at most.

ARGH!!!

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!