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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

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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
17 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Apr 1, 2011 2:54 AM in response to Arudi

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

Apr 1, 2011 3:27 AM in response to PeterBreis0807

There is a free tool named *_PDF OCR X_* which make a good job to extract text from PDFs.

The free version apply to single pages but with Preview it's quite easy to split the doc in single pages.
It apply also to pictures like screenshots.

I used it this morning to get a list of 850 items which I can't get an other way from an app.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) vendredi 1 avril 2011 12:27:36

Apr 1, 2011 10:58 PM in response to PeterBreis0807

Thank you for your time and clear explanations. Yes, Pages did ask me if I wanted to save it and I did save it, but I think I accidentally deleted it when I was deleting some other things.

Actually what I thought was if I export it as a .pdf, I would be able to open it and it would be in Pages. Not so.

My problem is that when I 'copy' from the first page of the preview pages, and 'paste' it to a new page in Pages, it does not fit. There is a lot of room at the bottom of the page, so when I make the letters larger, they go off the page to the second page. Not ideal but guess it will have to work. At least I can edit and finish the project. The last pages will just not match the first. It is okay.

When I paste the page to Pages, a lot of blue arrows appear across the top ruler. I can make due with all this, I just thought since it originated on Pages, it should fit on Pages when it came back in Preview. I thank you, Arudi

Apr 1, 2011 11:05 PM in response to KOENIG Yvan

Thank you for your time. I can actually 'copy' pages from the .pdf (Preview) and 'paste' them to the new page in Pages. The problem is it doesn't fit. I now realize there is no way to make those pages fit, so I will finish project with last part not a match to first part. It is okay.
Thanks so much for your help.
Arudi

Apr 2, 2011 12:56 AM in response to Arudi

Arudi wrote:
Thank you for your time. I can actually 'copy' pages from the .pdf (Preview) and 'paste' them to the new page in Pages. The problem is it doesn't fit. I now realize there is no way to make those pages fit, so I will finish project with last part not a match to first part. It is okay.
Thanks so much for your help.
Arudi



No, you click in the text in the pdf and select all the text and paste that across.

Peter

Apr 2, 2011 10:04 PM in response to fruhulda

Yes, I have selected the text in the PDF and pasted it into a Pages page but it does not fit. That is the whole problem. I wanted it to fit the page as it did before I exported it. At least I can do this (copy and paste) even though it does not fit the new pages. There is a large space at the bottom and if I make the letters larger, the page number (which would be the bottom line) shows on the second page. That is so weird. You would think the page would fit the same new page from Pages, but it doesn't. I can go ahead and finish this project with the last pages not looking like the first 94 pages. That will work okay. I have no images, just text.

If it would have fit, I would have had no problem getting it from the PDF to Pages.
Thanks again,
Arudi

Apr 2, 2011 10:41 PM in response to PeterBreis0807

Yes, I did select all and pasted it on new pages. It still doesn't fit, but I did select all and changed the size of the text and am now going through the text making paragraph spaces. For some reason, all the spaces between paragraphs disappeared when I exported it, so I now have 94 pages to put spaces between paragraphs.

Even then, there is still more space at the bottom of new page, but only by one line and I am just not putting a space between the last line and the page number. That will be okay.
Thanks again,
Arudi

Apr 3, 2011 5:45 PM in response to fruhulda

fruhulda,

I selected some of the text, clicked 'Select All,' clicked a new page in Pages, Paste, all the text came over to Pages, but the text is much smaller than it was originally (there is almost two pages to one new page, so I enlarge the text so it will give me only one page per page.

There is only one page on each page of the PDF. It does not come over like it is from the PDF. When the text comes over, it is the same size as on the PDF (small) and does not separate pages, so since the text is small, there's almost two pages on one new page.

I enlarge the text to move second page downward and out of first page. When it gets to bottom, some of the words go to the second page, so I make text smaller and some of page-two shows up on first page. So I move the second page down to where it belongs, and there is extra space at the bottom of page one. After I put in all the paragraph spacing, only the page number is on the second page, so I just took the space out from between the last line and the page number, causing the number to be on the correct page, just next to the last line.

I realize I should be able to select and paste and it should be okay but mine isn't, so I have done something wrong but I can do it as I mentioned above and it will be okay, just time consuming. Thanks,
Arudi

Set up pages in Pages to fit pages in Preview.

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