Making paragraph styles permanently stay in styles drawer

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Making paragraph styles permanently stay in styles drawer

I'm running into a frustrating problem. I'm creating a document to be an ebook and will export the document in PDF and ePub. I will also use the .pages document to import the text into ibooks. Anyways, I'm new to the process and I found Apple's "ePub Best Practices for Pages" and the problem I'm running into is with the styles drawer. When I delete the example text some of the styles in the styles drawer disappear because I'm not using the styles. I want to be able to copy and paste the text that I have from Evernote into Pages and choose from the styles, but I can't since they disappear from the styles drawer. And since I will eventually import the project into iBooks Author, I'm creating each section separtetly so iBooks organizes the sections correctly. I'll be creating about 17 .pages documents (eventually combining them together for the ePub and PDF, but keeping them separate for now for ibooks author) and would like to start with a blank document to copy and paste my text in AND have the all the styles be there when I need them. Any suggestions?

I'm trying to wrap my head around how I create styles to work with the Table of Contents, that's my biggest concern when I put all 17 documents together. I want the TOC to autopopulate when I put them all in one document.

Thanks for the help.

iMac (27-inch Late 2009), Mac OS X (10.7.3)

Posted on Feb 17, 2012 1:41 PM

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Answer 1

Feb 17, 2012 3:18 PM in response to jpoterbin

Can you sort out your punctuation and break your thoughts up into paragraphs? That just gave me a minor headache.

As near as I can make out you want to import your styles from EndNote? I didn't know it had any.

How is losing styles a problem if you are not using them?

If you are using them you will not lose them. If you want to keep them, leave them.

If you wish to work in iBooks Author why not start with iBooks Author?

If you wish to create a template, and you want all the styles to be available, you will need to create them.

Pages does not work around blank templates without you first creating material. You can delete the text after you have created the Styles but the best practice with Pages is make sample text and objects, from which to make styles and placeholders, then substitute in the final material by drag and drop or cut paste match style.

Pages will import Styles from other .pages and Word .doc files, if that is what you want but Styles go with the document not the Application. Pages will even selectively import styles so you can have a document which holds every imaginable style and then only import the ones you need.

Best however is ti construct an exact template for what you want to reuse.

T.O.C. is a more or less one off process, so you leave that till last, after you have assembled the entire publication. It works by collecting all instances of selected Styles eg Heading 1, 2 and 3 and inserting them into a specially formated block of text at the point of TOC insertion. It only searches back from that point till either the end of the document or till the next T.O.C. It also only searches material in the main text inside the set margins of a Word processing document.

Peter

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Answer 2

jpoterbin Author

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Feb 17, 2012 4:08 PM in response to PeterBreis0807

Ok, that makes sense. I initially thought Apple provided "ePub Best Practices for Pages" to make sure the styles in the style drawer worked with the TOC.

I'm starting out in Pages, instead of iBooks Author, because I want to create a PDF and an ePub version with only text and photos so it'll work on a wide range of devices instead of just the iPad. Plus, I need to meet a deadline and creating a basic structure in Pages will go quicker.

I used Evernote to copyedit all the articles, not EndNote. It's a cloud note-taking app that keeps all your stuff in sync. It allows me to work in different locations.

So, when I initially started with the best practices document I didn't have a use for all the styles immediately. I wanted to clear all of the example text away and then work with my content. From what I'm getting at, I should just keep all the example content until the end and delete it when I know which styles I want to use. I was hoping that the styles drawer would be a bank of styles I could go to regularly to choose whatever I need, but it's actually only the styles I'm currently using.

I think you've helped me. I just want to make sure my styles are lining up with the TOC. In the best practices document the two categories that will populate the TOC are Chapter and Subtitle. You're saying I can wait until the end to select those categories if I create them myself?

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Answer 3

Feb 17, 2012 5:04 PM in response to jpoterbin

It is always best to do the TOC last, although you can clear it and do it again.

To my knowledge it is not interactive, it is a sweep of the document at the time you insert it.

Styles do not span documents. They are specific to the document you are in for the sensible reason that you would not want text changing in unopened documents behind your back just becuase you had done something to the document you are currently in. TextEdit works this way and it can be a quite irritating game of musical chairs.

You can always recover the styles in the best practice document as long as you don't overwrite it with your changes. Save it as a template.

Menu > Format > Import Styles…

Lets you navigate to another .pages or .doc file and take what styles you want from there. Just be sure to both name them sensibly and know what they look like in that particular document.

Peter

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Answer 4

Apr 25, 2013 5:18 AM in response to PeterBreis0807

- How is losing your styles a problem if you are not using them?

Because most times I want to start with a blanc document, not with a template with a lot of content that I have to replace or delete.

I have managed to make a blanc template with my own styles permanently in place in the Styles Drawer.

But this was a confusing process. I made new styles. Then when deleting all content from the document to leave it blanc, sometimes the new styles disappeared, and sometimes they stayed. What is the trick? What is the easiest way to make a style stay permanently in the Styles Drawer, to save as a blanc template?

--Johannes

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