In Pages 5, why are page thumbnails different sizes?

Brilliantly?! Really?

Small thumbnails indicate succeeding pages in a Section.

Peter

Interesting as always to see what some think.

A single section obviously has a first page, and succeeding pages.

Peter

You seem to to be determined to get this wrong, perhaps you may be mistaken on the second point, as on the first.

Peter

I have this exact same problem, I also don't use sections in my documents (at least not the ones this is happening to), and it occurs in "mid-document" sort of speak, in random locations, and it comes and goes depending on my scrolling and editing.

stemperly is 100% correct about it having nothing to do with sections.

It drives me crazy so if anyone has an idea to fix it please let us know. On the other hand Pages is missing so many features and is so "beta" that it's likely just one of the many screw-ups by the software team. Perhaps someday there will be more than just the two of them, and we will get some actual updates to the core functionality.

<Edited by Host>

Hi Stemperley,

Editing a Header or Footer with the command "Start new header/footer here" automatically adds a section break.

And the thumbnail for the next page is large.

I'm not sure if that explains what is happening in your document.

Regards,

Ian.

stemperly was 100% wrong.

You can argue it all you want, but they are Section Breaks.

Sadly my assumptions are not as inaccurate as you seem to think. But the more people get it wrong the more determined they are right.

Peter

I know what a section break is, I know what a page break is. I'm a writer who has used innumerable word processing programs over the years and have been an IT worker for 10 years now.

I have a Pages document. It has no (or only one depending on your point of view), section(s). It has page breaks only. The pagination is set to start at "1" on the first page and proceed normally to the end of the document (300 or so pages). I am using Pages 5.5.2 on a brand new iMac. I have NONE of the previous or older versions/types of Pages on my computer.

The pages thumbnails on the side, do actually CHANGE SIZE randomly as I am editing the document. These differing sizes are NOT CORRELATED WITH THE BEGINNING OR ENDING OF SECTIONS. These size changes are also NOT CORRELATED WITH THE PAGE BREAKS (in case you were about to argue the similarity of page breaks and section breaks). As I work through the document and scroll up and down editing here or there, the size of the thumbnails RANDOMLY CHANGE SIZE. Sometimes this is correlated with me working on a section, sometimes I can work on a section and no change happens at all. The thumbnails that change size often change back again when I scroll back to them later on.

To anyone else reading this: I am having a real bad time with this fellow who is just the most insulting person I have met for a while, however many of my posts about him are being deleted. If anyone knows (including the mods of this forum) of the proper way to REPORT or get rid of a troll/abuser like him on Apple Support Communities or a place to report his behaviour, please let me know.

<Edited by Host>

If I click on a thumbnail the page/s has a yellow border indicating it's a section. As you can see from the image posted, the thumbnail of the second page is smaller. The next thumbnail is larger as that is the beginning of a new section. Perhaps you can upload an image that shows otherwise – or not?

How do we get around the fact that you are wrong? Followed up by your blind insistence of not even really looking at the problem and just adamantly insisting that your wild guessing, is actually reasoning.

You may not like what I am saying, perhaps a national characteristic?, but you would be better preoccupied with actually testing and establishing what is going on.

My exasperation is a result of posters such as yourself doing so little to resolve what is patently obvious, even when it is clearly explained.

Protest all you like. You just don't like the answer.

Peter

Hello,

I'm trying to avoid the bully here (PeterBreis0807). I really wasn't going to comment anymore but I have inadvertently found proof. Excuse the caps for emphasis, I am really VERY UPSET that this guy is constantly insulting me and others on the Apple discussion boards, that the managers are apparently deleting my posts about that issue, and that he simply won't stop bullying. Why should anyone come here for help, when there are bullies like that stomping all over everyone and insulting their posts? The caps are more for him than for you.

Anyway ...

As you can see in the attached screenshot, I am working on a document. You will have to take my word for it, but it HAS NO SECTION BREAKS. It has Page breaks only at the beginning of each chapter. As I'm working on it, the page thumbnails DO actually change size randomly.

- In this case, my cursor is on the first page of chapter thirteen which appears as a small thumbnail.

- the page before it (on the other side of the page break no less) has also become "small."

- three pages before that, the thumbnails are also "small" again, but If I scrolled up, you would see that two pages later they all go back to "big."

- the thumbnail for the page AFTER the page I'm on, WITH NO PAGE BREAK OR SECTION BREAK BETWEN THEM, is "big."

- If I scroll the document up and down a few times, and especially if I went to a "far" chapter and came back, they would all be the same "big" size again.

It seems likely to be a screen redraw refresh issue to me (note the weird gap between page 211 and 212).

So no less than FIVE changes of size for the thumbnails with seemingly NO CORRELATION to page breaks or section breaks, of which there are none.

So there you go. I no longer really even care why this happens. I'm sure that it will be fixed in the next update or at least before a few updates go by.

Mister BULLY-BOY is 100% INCORRECT despite his smug attitude.

The only offensive attitude I can find in the preceding posts is yours; Peter has simply been explaining, repeatedly, how Pages works.

Maybe your installation is not working correctly, but you seem to be going out of your way to avoid demonstrating that. You posted a screenshot that appears to show a document with section breaks after pages 211, 212 and 215 and tell us we have to take your word that those section breaks don't exist. If you had clicked on one of those thumbnails, to select the section, we could see either a yellow border around a large thumbnail and the subsequent small ones, which would indicate that there are section breaks you don't know about, or we would see part of the yellow border, enclosing all the thumbnails, which would mean that there are no section breaks, but Pages is not displaying the thumbnails correctly on your system. I suspect that something is broken on your installation of Pages, and it is showing additional meaningless large thumbnails, but Peter's explanation of what the large thumbnails mean is correct.

To answer your particular issues with my post, (and to guard against the probable deletion of the other one for mentioning the troll) ...

Your logic is faulty in regards the "obvious" section breaks. Of course they LOOK like section breaks because when you make a section break, the page size of the thumbnails changes as you say. My question was WHY I have got what APPEARS to be section breaks, when I have no section breaks in the document. If you aren't going to take my word for it that I don't have section breaks in the document, then what's the point of you posting here at all?

As to the yellow outlines, my document is ONE SINGLE SECTION. One document of 500 pages or so with NO (so effectively, one) section breaks. If I highlighted the whole section (document) so that the yellow box appeared, then there is no way you could tell anything is there? Unless that is I can get 500 thumbnails into one screen shot and unless that screen shot is actually a movie.

As I have said several times already, the thumbnails RANDOMLY CHANGE SIZES back and forth between small and large WHILE I'M EDITING THE DOCUMENT. If I saved it and scrolled back to the beginning, all the thumbnails would be the same size again. They change back and forth AS I'm editing whether I save the document explicitly or not.

Third reply ...

Proof AGAIN that you people are incorrect.

Screenshot of yellow highlight attached.

Different sized thumbnails caught "in the act" of changing sizes IN ONE SECTION.

Think about being more POLITE next time folks.