How do I get text to flow from one page to the next in Pages 5?

That makes sense. Opening a 5 doc in 09 would be anachronistic, or something.

I exported my 5 doc to 09 and opened it in 09. But the feature that supposedly is there - little blue boxes on the text boxes that allow you to link them - isn't there. Under Format - Text Box, there is, tantalizingly, a 'Link Selected Text Boxes' feature, but it's grayed out.

Thanks for any help.

Pages 5 is a terrible disappointment. Pages used to be a viable alternative to Word, now it's a joke. Apple is a consumer products company now, so don't expect them to deliver software for professionals is the message, I guess. Frustrating to say the least.

Just got my MBP 15" and was really looking forward to using the "improved" interface with my entire Pages library (a collection of documents from the past 6 years or so).

First got a message saying side-by-side pages can't be viewed in Pages 5. I have to imagine what my booklets are going to look like before I print them. That's an Apple Mac GUI no-no. (Tim Cook and company were supposed to have channeled that s/w design sense from Steve Jobs.) Then, as all of you have been writing here over the past 2 years, I can't link all the text boxes across a 16- or 20-page document? HUH? Really?

I almost feel like the dispossessed QuarkXpress user from years passed, when they were still getting their **** together but still charging for each new version as if they had perfected their application. Beyond frustrating, yup.

Apple, are you listening? We need the classic Apple applications that honor all the great capabilities of the applications of the past, and that follow GUI conventions that empower our skills so our imaginations can soar, not the other way around.

Best to register your feelings in the App Store by rating/reviewing Pages 5.5.2.

Meanwhile find an alternative, more reliable application, or continue to use Pages '09 which should still be in your Applications/iWork folder.

Peter

Peter,

In fact, I reinstalled Pages '09 and I'm imagining that it looks and operates better on my new retina screen MBP 15".

It's good to know that more people than just me are extremely upset about Pages 5 lack of support for true desktop publishers. I produce tabloid-size leaflets for high school students to review before their end-of-course exams. The final folded format of these are not be possible without the text-flow ability as described here. (Hmm, I wonder if Apple was pressured by QXP or Adobe to lighten their application to make those specialty products more competitive?)

Your suggestion about rating the application is an excellent one, and maybe even apply that idea at the one-to-one trainings I'll be attending this year! I'd like to keep this and other comparable issues about Pages alive until Apple re-enables those functions and considers the good upgrade suggestions that have been posted here and elsewhere.

Best,

iRon

Thank you, Peter. you saved me. Can't imagine functioning without the linking feature for text boxes. On your recommendation, I found old Pages in iWorks. Grateful to you for your wisdom and sharing it. - Alaskan who prefers fishing to word processing.

I agree with you. I think Apple has honestly lost their way. It really started with Aperture being killed off, then iPhoto loosing so much functionality when it became Photos that I wanted to scream at Apple and sent plently of feedback to Apple via apple.com/feedback.

I just don't know what they are thinking... they have dumbed down their best tools and are pushing their dedicated users away from their apps which they loved and made life simple.

They were on the right track with iPhotos and the previous version of Pages but know its all going to crap. These apps are barely usable now. Very sad indeed. 😟😠

I wanted to share a letter I sent to Craig Federighi, copied to Tim Cook (if I have his email address right). Unless users keep beating the drum, Apple will think we don't care. I don't want to purchase the Adobe or QuarkXpress products. For the level of work I do, I want to use Pages. Bring back linked text blocks. Bring back tool palettes. Bring back mail merge.

Dear Craig,

I just watched your Mac OS presentation at WWDC 2016, and got motivated to write again about all the great features in Pages ’09 that were dropped in the Mavericks version of Pages, that haven’t been brought back in any shape or form.

As a long-time Mac user yourself, you know not to confuse lack of user action to contact you with happy acquiescence or lemming-like apathy.

I used iWorks since Apple offered it as a product, and used Pages as my only word processor for just as long. You can imagine my dismay when I discovered that two very powerful features were dropped, along with 100 others.

Text blocks (on blank pages) can’t be linked:

(https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6101199?searchText=pages%20text%20block%20l inking)

(https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5921680?answerId=24929628022#24929628022)

(https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5620564?answerId=23977222022#23977222022)

Basically, Craig, the bottom line was well summarized in this post:

Mar 26, 2015 1:11 AM in response to luanfromparkland

About 100+ features never made it from Pages '09 v4.3 into Pages v5. Facing pages, built-in mail merge, and linked check boxes are just three of the casualties of progress. The work around for missing Text box linking is to use Pages '09, or a non-Apple word processing package that supports that feature.

... I have both Pages v5.5.2 and Pages '09 v4.3 on Yosemite 10.10.2.

Mr. Federighi, My contribution to this discussion was never credited to my profile (which is still scored at zero), is sitting on this page: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5578735?answerId=29215987022#29215987022

Please read those messages, Craig. I’ve been using the Mac since 1985. I still have a decade of employment years in me, but the software that has always enabled me to be better, and be more than I am, appears to be fading. As Mac zealots, we don’t want that!

Pages needs to be the useful “low end” alternative to Adobe’s inDesign and QuarkXpress, but it can’t do that without linked text blocks that flow from page to page inside the page layout space. You guys tested the tool column, okay, it’s not as useful as the moveable tool palettes that Pages ’09 had. Finally, what about the mail merge feature? It synchronized so nicely with Numbers, but now, it’s gone.

Teachers, like me, need to be one step ahead of our students. The documents they create with web applications are okay, but still not as precise (especially when printing) as Mac-based page layout applications. Do you remember WYSIWYG? That key strength in all Mac apps has been watered down in the Pages 5 app. In fact, as many of the contributors in the Apple Discussion space, I still use Pages ’09 precisely for these features that don’t exist in Pages 5.

I’ve been wanting to write to you and Tim Cook (recommended by Apple in-store trainers), but the furious pace of a typical school year has stopped me. Now, on summer vacation, I’m writing. We really need a solution. Will you help?

A loyal Mac user,

Ron Marx

Very nicely and well put Ron.

I've been a Mac user since Macs existed and heartily agree. I also used to be a VAR at one stage and noted that Apple really likes whatever Apple does, and if other people don't like what Apple does, they don't talk to those people.

In the case of Pages 5, it was a disaster and a massive disappointment when it was ill-launched and appears to be something Apple has walked away from except for the occasional bug fix when someone has a few spare moments from more pressing matters like shuffling this forum around yet again.

Someone will read your letter note the lack of anger, think that's unusual, maybe reply, but will do absolutely nothing about it. Apple makes its money basically from iPhones, period, and that is its focus these days.

My son is a very good Head Chef and has been offered a tempting position in a very new, very busy and popular modern café. The café pretty well lives off the reputation of another café in another part of town and for a time had a good chef who produced some very good restaurant quality food judging from their Instagram photos, but has moved onto a better restaurant. My son didn't have time to eat at the café which is situated in an odd location amongst a group of new high rise office buildings, so I checked it out. It was packed, killing the opposition neighboring cafés. I noted large groups coming out for lunch from the office buildings along with small groups of friends. There is an open kitchen so I could observe them and an espresso machine with display cabinet of brightly colored flash deserts and pastries for which the sister café is noted.

The menu was odd. Not much range except for the all day breakfast and the food looked basic, until you looked at what they were supposed to be. eg the "Cheeseburger" was supposedly Wagyu beef, bacon, aged cheddar, beetroot relish, mustard, Westmont pickle, aioli, St. Louis BBQ sauce & brioche bun. The other mains were similarly elaborate but otherwise ordinary dishes, so I ordered this as the best of the lot.

It was pretty much as described, but a single rather expensive burger on a plate, and like my coffee OK but not great. Very expensive for what it was, and essentially just a trendy burger, an excuse for people to pretend they are not eating junk food despite that is exactly what it is. Looking around I saw a lot of very happy people, at least 3 shifts during lunch easily serving over 200. Not at all disturbed at the high prices, the fact the food looked nothing like the Instagram pictures, nor that the food was oddly mediocre.

To come to my point, my son is being asked to take over and according to the owner bring the café up to my son's standard. We have talked about this at length. What is there is not remarkable, but it is very popular and making the owner a fortune. The reputation of the café is based on the deserts which as my son wryly remarks are mostly just bright food coloring with not much flavour, which people look at but get a meal instead. What can my son do that is going to improve the business? He certainly can massively improve the food but that is going to take time and money, without improving the bottom line and may test the staff who can pump out the upmarket junk food but really are not going to nail perfectly cooked and presented better dining. If he massively improves the quality are the customers going to notice, and more to the point are they going to like it? They obviously love the pretentious versions of ordinary dishes. Is this going to be a vanity project by the owner who wants to be something he can brag about, or what it is; a gold mine?

Apple is in the same boat. Living off past reputation and good quality but not exceptional products with better service and presentation than the competition. The money says don't try harder, or do better, the vast majority of customers now are from the Macdonalds, Pizza Huts and Taco Bells of the computer world. They like the brand, the look, the shops, and the reputation, but do very little with their gadgets except selfies and tweets.

Why try harder and actually make something good?

Peter

Peter,

Thank you for sharing this story, so full of lessons and the same type of passion and love that Steve infused into the company. Tim Cook and the entire team need to mindfully reconnect with this "different thinking" on a regular and sustained basis. Maybe these more ethereal aspects of Steve's approach have gone by the wayside.

We are drops in the ocean, but we are also the ocean.

iRon