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SuperDazzeR Author

Level 1

1 points

Why can't I select background images in Pages 5?

So I've got a document with an image of a Gantt Chart, and it's been formatted to be in the background.

When I try to insert a new page before this image, it overlays the text of another page.

Trying to find 'select background images' is no where to be found, whereas in Pages 09, it was fine.

I'm all for simplicity, but removing something like this, and not being able to select this image at all?

Is there anything I've missed?

MacBook Air (13-inch Mid 2013), OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Oct 25, 2013 3:54 AM

Best reply

Gavin Lawrie

Level 2

425 points

Posted on Oct 25, 2013 9:46 AM

The only way to get the items seems to be:

"Select All" (⌘-A) - this will select everything in the document including things in the 'quasi-background'.
Then 'cut' the items from the page (⌘-X) and paste them back again.
When you paste back, any 'background' objects will now be in the foreground.

Doing this usually screws up your formatting. If you have a document that allows it, you can "deselect" everything except the background object before cutting - the cutting is essential, since even though you can 'select' the background object, you won't be able to interact with it in-place (clicking on it or its grab handles will simply deselect the object). I've not managed to find a way to do the 'deselecting' for a document that has 'inline text' - just ones with objects only.

This does appear to be a genuine bug in Pages 5 (rather than a feature set change) linked to Apple doing away with the concept of 'background' altogether.

Hopefully it will be fixed in an early bug-fix release.

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18 replies

Dec 1, 2015 8:34 AM in response to gwendolyngueva

None of these solutions worked in my case but here is what did....

The situation was a header that was divided into 3 components (Pages uses 3 components by default). The left had a logo that was un-selectable. The right had some right-aligned text. The middle had some returns and a horizontal rule that ran across the bottom of all three components.

The middle component had stretched the header container (with all 3 components) to cover the logo so that clicking got the empty left container -- as a background image, Pages had put the logo behind the left container rather than leave it in it. Using the "drag a marque starting in the grey off-page area" didn't work to select the logo.

Deleting some of the returns in the middle component -- which shortened the height of the header overall -- exposed enough of the bottom of the logo that it was now selectable.

I hope this helps someone.

And to join the chorus, Pages (and Numbers) aren't up to the quality standards I expect from Apple. I'd happily pay Apple for Pages if it meant that the program was better. As it is, I can't currently recommend it for either business or school use.

Dec 1, 2015 10:05 AM in response to Ed from ISI

Another thing you can try which sort-of does the same thing is to temporarily adjust the document header / footer settings: I've found that simply adding "1" to the first digit (so on my system, you change header / footer from 1.25 to 2.25) shoves the header / footer out of the way enough to be able to select items etc. Once you've done this, simply change them back. It is a bit tedious, but if it works, a lot less complicated than adding / removing return characters and so on.

Dec 1, 2015 10:50 AM in response to Gavin Lawrie

Gavin, nice solution!

I just tried it and the un-selectable logo moved with the header(!) so it wouldn't solve my situation but I can see that it would work if my document had been built differently.

Why can't I select background images in Pages 5?