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On one of my Macs, the ruler units in Pages show as metric no matter what ruler units I choose in the app settings. The document settings respond to being changed to inches, metric, or points, but the ruler units always remain metric. This occurs with every document I open on this Mac. Quitting and relaunching the app does not help. The region settings on the Mac are correct. Pages 14.2. MacOS 15.0.1
Mitch Stone wrote:
I can't duplicate this behavior on any of my other Macs, so this is a given. Only one Mac has this issue, and I don't see where anyone has ever reported this issue. I've certainly never seen it before. It should not actually matter what region is selected in System Settings, as the app settings allow for choosing metric or inches or points no matter how the Mac is configured. But as I said, no matter, as mine is set correctly. The rulers in other apps on this Mac (such as Keynote) behave correctly.
My only theory this is being caused by a corrupted Preferences file.
Move the Pages preferences file to your Desktop and relaunch Pages to see if the issue is resolved.
/Users/yourname/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iWork.Pages.plist
If this makes no difference, then boot your Mac into Safe Boot mode. Then launch Pages and see if the units issue is resolved. Reboot normally and again launch Pages to see if the issue was resolved via the Safe Boot cycle.
When I display horizontal and vertical rulers in Pages v14.2 on Sequoia v15.1, I see the ruler units change according to the choice of Ruler units made on the Pages Settings > Rulers panel. I cannot duplicate what you describe.
I am in the U.S. and my System Settings > General > Language & Region > Measurement system is set to US and the first Preferred Language is English (US). My Pages Edit menu > Spelling and Grammar > Show Spelling and Grammar panel is set to U.S. English.
I can't duplicate this behavior on any of my other Macs, so this is a given. Only one Mac has this issue, and I don't see where anyone has ever reported this issue. I've certainly never seen it before. It should not actually matter what region is selected in System Settings, as the app settings allow for choosing metric or inches or points no matter how the Mac is configured. But as I said, no matter, as mine is set correctly. The rulers in other apps on this Mac (such as Keynote) behave correctly.
My only theory this is being caused by a corrupted Preferences file.
These plist files are no longer found in this location, or any other that I can determine. They aren't in the System Library folder either. I even opened the Pages package. Not there either. At some point Apple moved them to some hidden place. Have not tried Safe Mode yet.
Problem solved. It required finding and trashing the plist for Pages, but it isn't so easy to find anymore in Sequoia. This is the path:
Users/username/Library/Containers/Pages/Data/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iWork.Pages.plist
The Library directory is hidden and is revealed by typing cmd-shift-period or holding down the option key when selecting the Go menu in the Finder.
Open a Finder Window, click in it, and then press cmd+J to open a Finder Show View Options panel. Select the Show Library Folder, and no more performing that last sentence of your post as the Library folder will always be visible.
There is also the identically named plist in your ~/Library/Preferences folder and I would be inclined to move it to the Desktop before I would dip into that Pages containers folder tree to remove it there. These files are not identical and it is a roll of the dice which one may be impacting Pages behavior.
No need for any more solutions, thank you. As I've said, the problem is already fixed by the method I described. But I do strongly suggest you look in the username/Library/Preferences folder yourself to see if the Pages plist file resides there. I can tell you already, with complete certainty, that it does not. It lives only in the directory at the path I provided. I checked this on two Macs running Sequoia. Both the same.
Something you should understand is that when I mention that the com.apple.iWork.Pages.plist file is in ~/Library/Preferences, it is because I checked beforehand and found it there on my macOS 15.1.1 and 13.7.1 installations. This does not mean it must be on your Mac, only the possibility.
I have no ability to prove it on my own Macs, but I suspect where this preference file is stored changed with a recent macOS update, and if you also find it in the /Library directory, it got there through a migration from an earlier macOS version. The two Macs I checked were not migrated and it resided in only in /Containers. When I deleted it, and relaunched Pages, it was recreated at only this location. So in the interest of science you could try deleting the plists in both directories on one of your Macs and see which one(s) Pages recreates.
I will use a Time Machine migration from a prior operating system when setting up a new Mac and the Pages plist in ~/Library/Preferences dates from May 2022. So yes, I should remove these to not play them forward.
No help in Safe Mode. How this looks. As you can see the document size and margins are all in inches but the ruler is metric, and even more oddly the 0 mark is centered on the page.
Ruler units cannot be changed in Pages