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How do I use Pages to create a poetry book that contains the text of each poem plus an audio file of the author reading that text? I find no poetry books of any sort in the Apple Book Store and I find no templates for poetry in either portrait or landscape formats. Surely this can't be uncharted territory. There must be a model out there that I can learn from. So what am I missing?
The ToC is comprised of paragraph styles that you use in the document body such as a title for each poem, and perhaps a sub-heading for the poem author. Apple has an article from the Pages User Guide for Mac:
Create a table of contents in Pages on Mac - Apple Support
You can place the title of a poem in the ToC by using the appropriate paragraph style for that title, and then once the ToC is generated, enabling the title paragraph style in the Customize Styles button in the sidebar. You might want to isolate each poem to its own section so you retain the option of changing their order of occurrence in the document by dragging around section thumbnails.
You can place a small text box beneath, or to one side of the audio with notes about its content. Select both, and group them from the Arrange panel.
The Reflowable EPUB is the right choice for just text, but if you do not want that embedded audio wandering from its Pages document position elsewhere in the EPUB, then Fixed Layout may be the right approach. Test.
The ToC is comprised of paragraph styles that you use in the document body such as a title for each poem, and perhaps a sub-heading for the poem author. Apple has an article from the Pages User Guide for Mac:
Create a table of contents in Pages on Mac - Apple Support
You can place the title of a poem in the ToC by using the appropriate paragraph style for that title, and then once the ToC is generated, enabling the title paragraph style in the Customize Styles button in the sidebar. You might want to isolate each poem to its own section so you retain the option of changing their order of occurrence in the document by dragging around section thumbnails.
You can place a small text box beneath, or to one side of the audio with notes about its content. Select both, and group them from the Arrange panel.
The Reflowable EPUB is the right choice for just text, but if you do not want that embedded audio wandering from its Pages document position elsewhere in the EPUB, then Fixed Layout may be the right approach. Test.
Hello Frank Lowney1,
Thank you for reaching out to Apple Support Communities, and we'll be happy to help in any way we can. We understand you have a feature request for Pages. You can leave feedback about this for Apple here: Product Feedback - Apple
Cheers!
Here is that blank book template where I have removed that glaring 96 pt placeholder text, and replaced it with some verse from Tennyson's Ulysses, and centered below the prose is the audio (m4a) of that text. This is from Pages v12.1.
First of all, when you export this to PDF, the audio file attachment is removed. When you export it to Word .docx, you are greeted by a new folder on the Desktop containing the separate audio file, and the Word document with a link to that audio.
If you want to retain both in a single document, then your only option on export is an EPUB, where you embed the fonts, and select Fixed Layout so that what you see in the EPUB is the exact layout as shown above in Pages with a playable audio file. Pages does not offer any convenience to place a documenting caption with the audio file, so you may need to get creative with a small text box beneath it.
Thanks for the reply. I take it from your suggestion that I submit a "feature request" in Product Feedback - Apple because some aspect of what I hoping to do is not currently possible. So I think that I need more help in figuring out how to frame my feature request.
Using the Blank Book template, I can enter text with or without a text block and I can add audio by recording in situ or importing a media file of pre-recorded audio from disk. So what do I ask for?
Or should I be asking for a template focused on poetry?
Thanks Viking OSX, I have been able to get that far but cannot add additional poems such that they appear in the TOC as separate items. This is what I was hoping to find in a template. Is this best done with Chapters? If so I am not seeing how to create additional Chapters, one for each poem.
Not being able to caption the audio file is a serious shortcoming since many naive readers will not know that the audio is available (recognize the icon) or how to invoke it. As well there may be a need to comment on the text before, after or both.
If I ever get a usable Pages document for this kind of thing I will create a template from it and offer it as open source. I was amazed that no one has done this already.
Re export, the hope is to be able to use re-flowable EPUB but fixed format EPUB will work too albeit as a second choice.
Again, thanks for the help.
Creating a poetry book with both text and audio in Pages
