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Level 1

10 points

Set up pages in Pages to fit pages in Preview.

I had 94 pages of text in Pages and wanted to send a copy of them from my MacBook Pro to my Imac. I was still working on them, so wanted to keep the Pages copy on the MacBook. I mailed them to myself as a PDF so I would have a copy on both computers. When they got to the Imac, they were not in Pages format, but in Preview. They are no longer on my MacBook in Pages, but I do have them in Preview since I mailed to myself. I don't know what happened to the Pages copies and at this point know they are gone as I have checked everywhere I need to check. I suppose I accidentally deleted them. I've used Spotlight and checked Trash, etc. - they are gone.

My problem is, I have the copy in Preview and wanted to move the pages to Pages, so I can continue working on them. When I set up the new page in Pages, as it was originally, the Preview page will not fit on it. I have changed margins, resized words, checked all the Inspector and toolbar sizes etc. to make sure they are like the original pages. If I make the text smaller, too much of the second page shows on the first page. If I make it larger, one line shows on page two.

I need help. Thank You, Arudi

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.6)

Posted on Mar 31, 2011 9:43 PM

Best reply

PeterBreis0807

Level 8

41,170 points

Posted on Apr 1, 2011 2:54 AM

A pdf is like printing a copy but it is printed to the computer and can be sent to a real printer at a later time. Preview .app is the default software on the Mac that opens .pdf files (amongst many other files), so it is not really in 'Preview format' it is just something that is read by Preview or Acrobat or any software that can open pdf files.

Pages would have asked you whether you wanted to save your original file. You must have thought that exporting the document as a pdf is the same as saving the actual file, which it is not.

The .pdf is now an image which you can paste as such in Pages, but not edit.

Not is all lost however as you can copy and paste the text from Preview into Pages and also selectively crop and edit any images you may have in the .pdf. Although not ideal you can at least somewhat reconstruct the document.

I urge you to download the Pages09_UserGuide.pdf from under the Help menu and learn at least the basics of how things work. Alao I think you should look at Apple's tutorials on its support web pages on working with Macs.

Peter

View in context

17 replies

Apr 3, 2011 6:10 PM in response to Arudi

*Paste and Match Style* for the text to be the same as your Pages text. OSX copy and paste retains the style of the copied text.

You will need to restyle the text. This is just a way of recovering what you had, it is not a clean neat, move it from here to there and it is all done.

It sounds like you have some keep paragraph together settings in your text:

+Inspector > Text > More > Pagination & Break+

Peter

Arudi Author

Level 1

10 points

Apr 5, 2011 10:26 PM in response to PeterBreis0807

You would think I could copy and paste. That was the first thing I did but the words are smaller on the PDF than the original and they come to .pages smaller than they were originally. I did the inspector > Text > More > Pagination & Break. It is all unchecked except the Prevent Window and Orphan Lines (this was also checked in original). I checked everything in the inspector and it is all exactly like I had it set up for the original.

This must be something I did when exporting because the words are smaller in the PDF, and no paragraph spaces when it pastes on .pages. There are paragraph spaces on the original PDF, so you would think if there are spaces on the PDF, and I copy and paste and match style, they would be on the new pages. Not. I will take page by page and move to new .pages, change size of text, and put in paragraph spaces.

I've changed the fond size and line spacing but even with select all, the pages still don't fit. I'm finished with this. Thanks again. Arudi

Message was edited by: Arudi

Message was edited by: Arudi

Set up pages in Pages to fit pages in Preview.