Limit on word count that can be pasted into Pages?

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Limit on word count that can be pasted into Pages?

Is there a limit on word count that can be pasted into Pages document at one time? I am providing support for an author friend of mine who is preparing his book manuscript for ePublishing using Pages '09 (v 4.0, on a PowerMac G5 running OS X 10.4.11). He is copying large blocks of text out of Quark XPress (v 6.5) and pasting them into what will be his complete master manuscript document in Pages. He will typically copy a chapter at a time in Quark, but only a portion of what he copied actually gets pasted into Pages each time. On his last copying pass, he copied 35,601 words from Quark, but was only able to paste 6,096 words into Pages.

Is the limitation on the Pages side? Or is there a limitation on how much can be stored on the Clipboard in OS X? I am also checking to see if there is a limit at the Quark end, but that seems unlikely, as Quark was designed to handle heavy lifting in the pro publishing market. Anyone have a clue?

Posted on Oct 1, 2015 8:42 AM

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Answer 1

VikingOSX

Level 10

123,248 points

Oct 1, 2015 9:30 AM in response to Scott Wilson5

Apple engineering might remember what the copy/paste (clipboard) buffer size is in Tiger, and the first release of Pages '09 v4.0 — but I doubt anyone here (not Apple employees) will have that information. It is old hardware with low hardware memory constraints to accommodate Quark, Pages, and the operating system simultaneously.

If Quark 6.5 can export to MS Word document formats directly, and I don't know that for certain, then why bother with a really ancient, first release of Pages '09 v4.0? That is gambling a great deal on that final Masters document, and hoping that when Pages '09 v4.0 exports to Word, it will not be a total waste of time.

Although I wish your friend well, I would recommend newer Apple hardware and operating systems where more modern, non-Apple document production software is better suited for interchange with University staff (unless that is going to be PDF in final form).

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