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Find will not search for a word in a Pages document

My Pages is a long document that I use every day to record my communications, over 650 pages, and it won't search for words I know are there. What am I missing, does it have to be in document, section, or format? Or something else I don't know about?

There are no updates and the app otherwise is functioning alright.


Appreciate your help.

Mac mini, macOS 11.6

Posted on Feb 20, 2022 8:03 AM

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Posted on Feb 20, 2022 8:22 AM

Have you told the Find tool to match on whole words or case as appropriate?



Occasionally, but in no particular pattern, you may search for a word that is in hyphenated form, and sometimes that text string will not be found until you click the > button on the Find/Replace panel. I just experienced Pages v11.2 immediately finding the text string in one example, and not in another, so it is not uniform behavior.


I have a sentence in the body text that contains the word kind. That word is in a table cell, and also in a rectangular shape. When I search for kind, there is no find count. But clicking the > arrow lights up all three instances of the word kind.

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Feb 20, 2022 8:22 AM in response to jhudgina

Have you told the Find tool to match on whole words or case as appropriate?



Occasionally, but in no particular pattern, you may search for a word that is in hyphenated form, and sometimes that text string will not be found until you click the > button on the Find/Replace panel. I just experienced Pages v11.2 immediately finding the text string in one example, and not in another, so it is not uniform behavior.


I have a sentence in the body text that contains the word kind. That word is in a table cell, and also in a rectangular shape. When I search for kind, there is no find count. But clicking the > arrow lights up all three instances of the word kind.

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Feb 20, 2022 10:03 AM in response to jhudgina

Ok. In the Find panel, there is a 🔍⌄. Click that and it will show you all of the previous find strings. The last item in that drop-down menu allows you to clear your previous find strings. Do that. Quit, and relaunch Pages.


I have reset my Find tool to just Find and Whole words, and no Match Case. I also have a sentence in Pages v11.2 that includes the hyphenation pre-Columbian. I can find the text strings pre, columbian, and pre-columbian. Find has no issue crossing section boundaries. However, if I have pre-Columbian in a table cell within the second section, Find returns two matches in the body text for both sections, but not in the table cell. It will only find the pre-Columbian string in that table cell after being bribed twice with the > on the Find panel.

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Feb 28, 2022 10:49 PM in response to VikingOSX

Alas, this does not remedy the situation in my case (MacBook Pro, OS 12.2.1, Pages 11.2). I read of a similar issue from last Fall, which advised closing all open Pages documents, quitting Pages, restarting the Mac. I was hoping something less drastic wa available by now.

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Find will not search for a word in a Pages document

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