Pages as replacement for Word ?

Pages solves a huge Word problem, which makes me love the program -- lists. I don't know how many hours I've wasted toying with Word's lists. They easily get whacked out, showing the wrong numbers, get misaligned, etc. Pages' lists just seem to work.

The line and character sliders in the Inspector work beautifully on lists but I still find Appleworks lists easier to format (as far as font or style). Pages does wierd things when you try and bold just one line. In addition, Appleworks has more option for bullet styles.

Kurt

Appleworks has more option for bullet styles

Once I found how to change bullets, I found that Pages has a lot more pre-defined text bullet options and there are image bullets as well as to use a custom image. Go to the text inspector & choose the List button. There is a drop-down menu under Bullets & Numbering & then the different bullets are in still another drop-down. One thing I really like is that you can size the bullet separately from the text, actually as a percentage of the text.

Go to the text inspector & choose the List button

You helped open my eyes...I had been looking for this feature..it seems to be the coolest way to insert bullets in texts with much control on it...Thank you Peggy...

PowerBook G4 12" 1.5 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.6) 768 MB RAM

Art...

....and who ever else was looking for an easy way to print labels!

Just when I was about to give in, and make the first turn back towards anything Microsoft....

There is a much easier way for printing mailing labels and/or envelopes on a mac.

We all were just looking for the wrong program to do a job that should be handled by the native .app its coming from!

DO NOT USE Pages to print labels, but rather print them right out of your address book! Once you open the printer interface from Address book - the world of mac once again prevails! You can select exactly what you want to appear on your label or envelope!

Hope this helps many,

-Al-

MBP Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Cool Peggy! I had not discovered that feature!

The bullet size control is a fantastic improvement over many programs I have used.

Kurt

Compatibility:
Pages has two simple ways to create PDF files. Print and select PDF there or export and select PDF. Since I have Adobe Distiller I have the option of a PDF printer - that plus the return of desktop printers makes creating PDF files simple.

Printer Annoyance:
Hmm, I'll have to pay attention to which printer is selected by default. And I agree, being asked if I want to save (after I've just saved!) is annoying.

But hey, not having to use Word makes up for the small number of annoyances I have with Pages.

Pages isn't a Word replacement for me but it certainly has reduced the amount of time I spend cursing at my Mac. When Pages first came out I made the decision to put Word aside and use Pages as my WP of choice. It was a resounding success. This academic year I've resorted to using Word only once.

I found that I liked and used Pages more when I set up a few templates.

I have a General writing template where I set up all my paragraph and list styles just the way I like them, fonts, line and paragraph spacing, indents, etc. I pretty much use that exclusively.

I have a template for letters that I use for work.

I also have a template for proposals that I use for work.

With those in place, I can race through most everything I do.

The other handy thing I use Pages for is fixing all of the crappy formatting found in most word documents that have been passed around the office. Pages fixes these up in a flash where Word makes it very difficult.

The more I use Pages, the more things I find. Of course, there are the times I found something & then can't find it again when I want it! 😉

darrenv makes an excellent use of Pages - templates. This is also how I work. 99% of the time I can load my custom templates complete with my logo, header and the addressee - most of my correspondence is to less than 10 people. Then, all of my original work, brochures and the like, make use of Apple's excellent templates. Thank you Apple for the excellent templates!

Other converts also make excellent use of Pages as a replacement to Word. But, for me, one thing stands in the way of complete replacement...

#1 Feature request for Pages
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Being able to; read/export to Word, documents that make use of the "record/show/hide changes" feature.

This feature is absolutely essential for collaborative type work as a professional on charters, proxies, and other business documents. I even need this feature for personal legal documents such as my will. My high school daughter also requires this feature in English class (they use MSWord/MSOffice, we use NeoOffice at home) when they write essays. They must submit a "clean" rough draft, a "clean final draft, and a marked copy showing changes. Inserted text is underlined and deleted text is strikethrough. This helps the teacher see how the student writes, and prevents plagiarism.

"record/show/hide changes" truly is a nice feature for collaborative or draft work.

What is essential for You to have in Pages?

IMHO we need to be very careful about what we ask for in regards to Pages. I don't want Pages to become a Word clone - I switched to Pages to get away from Word and its bloat, its idiosyncrasies, and its annoyances. A few times a year I need to collaborate on proposals and grants - I'll gladly launch Word for those tasks if Pages will take care of my every day needs.

If I were in control of the iWork team I'd focus on enhancing and improving Pages' current feature set while putting most of the team's efforts toward writing a spreadsheet program that could also function as a lite database application. It irks me that I need to retreat to Word (or AppleWorks) for mail merges. (I'm an academician, I don't want to keep all my students and their parents in my address book nor does Address Book provide me with all the fields I need.) Also, the new mathematical functions for tables are useful but don't replace the need for a spreadsheet. I miss the 'live editing' tables that both AppleWorks and Word give me.

Under my reign, some Pages enhancements would include: improved drawing functionality. We need a drawing layer or a specific drawing cursor - editing objects in Pages is a major pain. Paragraph and character styles need keyboard shortcuts. Objects need user set defaults - more times than not when I draw a shape I want it filled white not green. Why do I have to manually change this for each object I create? Pages needs to stop warning me to save after I've printed!! Missing font warnings need two improvements - to stop warning about fonts that aren't used in the document and to allow a third option besides continue and close - to pick a replacement font for the one that's missing.

dwb:

You wrote:
>IMHO we need to be very careful about what we ask for in regard to Pages...

Humble indeed! I ask for one minor item, and you as ask for the world! LOL. Your requests include; Spreadsheet, database, mail merge, improved drawing functionality, user defaults, and more...

Def. humble: having or showing a modest or low estimate of one's own importance
Yet you put obvious greater importance on your request.

I don't deny that I want the same things in Pages, but I simply understand that the things you ask for will be added in time, after all, Apple already has a great understanding of what makes a word processor in today's world. I remember when Apple had the first spreadsheet "visicalc" on the Apple ][+ (I still have mine) and these very requests have been part of Appleworks for what, 2+ decades?

You have to understand in business, that there is a natural progression to things. Programatically, Apple has to "catch everybody up" to faster computers and a new release of System software (guessing) later this year. They will have added new toolbox calls for speedier functions to things that you asked for above. If they implemented your humble feature requests now, with today's many 800Mhz machines still out there, Pages would be as slow as a three legged cat.

Also, there may be 😉 contractual agreements that Apple was sure to have had to sign to offer MSOffice at a discount with new machines, or to have the continuation of MSOffice for Mac support at all. Apple likely had to enter a no compete clause for a time with MS, hence, the obvious missing elements to Pages; Spreadsheet, database, mail merge, improved drawing functionality, etc. In time Apple will add these as it becomes feasible.

You wrote:
>I switched to Pages to get away from Word and its bloat.

Programmatically speaking, my request for "record/show/hide changes" is minor compared to your vast and rich request. "Record/show/hide changes" might involve a couple of extra control characters surrounding changed text with a subroutine that treats inserted text with an underline and deleted text with strikethrough. Hardly mentionable, but Apple hasn't implemented it before in Appleworks, Adobe doesn't have it in InDesign. Geeze, the code is already written in the open source "OpenOffice". I don't mind using OpenOffice for this task but I hardly think it is a bloat request in Pages. I ask because 3/4 persons in my house use this feature and it falls under the category of "word processing", unlike some of your requests.

DWB - I hope you get your killer app. Until then, I use many word processors, including; Pages, Textedit, BBedit, InDesign. Each capable and unique to the task at which I find them suitable.


G4 powerbook Mac OS X (10.4.4) Airport Extreme/Express(2); Wireless Canon i80; Elan HD w/Airtunes

G4 powerbook Mac OS X (10.4.4) Airport Extreme/Express(2); Wireless Canon i80; Elan HD w/Airtunes

I really like the levels aspect of this list creation. You can set a variety of bullet styles, control the indent level for each level and save the whole mess as one list style. Here is where a global pref would be very helpful. It would be great to save these custom lists so they are available in every doc without having to import it each time.

Kurt

Pages is a very good program that works very very well with Macs. I use it for all of my school projects, and its a great help, and its very easy to use, and since it's made by Apple, you know it works great! And i'm the the only using pages out of most of my friends, so rtf does work with other microsoft programs (although not all for some weird reason). Actually, maybe it would be easier for you to use "textedit." It came with my Powerbook, so I hope you have it. It's just basically for writing, and it saves the files in rich text format. Well, I g2g, but I hope you solve your problem and still stay with an Apple-native program!

A few corrections to your screed: Please note that I didn't ask for a spreadsheet or database in Pages, I said I'd set the iWorks team working on a new program to fill a hole in iWorks. Also note that I asked for refinements to features already in existence while you asked for a new feature and invited others to pipe in with their own requests for new features.

There is a big difference between what you ask for and what I ask for - while you want another room added to the house I'm asking that a squeaky door be oiled, a dirty window cleaned, and a set of broken blinds replaced. Since I am a programmer I now that adding new features tends to be much more difficult than refining features already in place and I was offering a warning based on professional experience.

And next time - before you hit the send button in response to another - stop to think that you are responding to a person at the other end of the wire.