You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Keynote doesn't copy and paste to Pages?

Whenever I try and copy and paste something from a Keynote slideshow to a Pages document, it doesn't work!

Text from Pages copies and pastes onto Keynote, but not vice versa.

I used to be able to do this but it has recently stopped working.


How can I solve this?

MacBook Pro, iOS 9.1

Posted on Nov 6, 2015 9:25 AM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Nov 8, 2015 4:26 AM

I was able to recreate your issue on one of my other laptops. As I was looking into the cause, I noted that the most recent version of Pages (5.6) had failed to download, so I was using a current copy of Keynote and an old copy of Pages (even though both are set to auto download and install). I manually downloaded the latest Pages from the Purchased list in the App Store, and paste into Pages started working again.


I've got another system I'm reloading to see if I can recreate the issue between Pages 5.6 and Keynote 6.6.

6 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Nov 8, 2015 4:26 AM in response to livhendriks

I was able to recreate your issue on one of my other laptops. As I was looking into the cause, I noted that the most recent version of Pages (5.6) had failed to download, so I was using a current copy of Keynote and an old copy of Pages (even though both are set to auto download and install). I manually downloaded the latest Pages from the Purchased list in the App Store, and paste into Pages started working again.


I've got another system I'm reloading to see if I can recreate the issue between Pages 5.6 and Keynote 6.6.

Nov 6, 2015 10:13 AM in response to livhendriks

Pasting from Keynote into the latest version of Pages is faulty.

Pasting text from Keynote into any other application that handles text does work.


A workaround until this is fixed is:

1 - copy the text in Keynote and paste into Text Edit, other text application,s will work also

then copy the text in Text Edit and paste into Pages


2 - use another text based application

Nov 7, 2015 7:00 AM in response to livhendriks

Can you provide step by step what you're doing? Copy/Paste is working fine for me, so not sure where the problem may be. Here's my more detailed steps for example:


1. In Keynote choose File -> New

2. Make sure "Standard" is selected at the top, and double click the "White" theme.

3. The presentation should open up with a title/subtitle slide. Do the following

a. For the title, change it to "Title of Test"

b. For the subtitle, change it to "The Copy/Paste Caper"

4. Next, in the title bar, click the "Text" icon to make "Text" appear in the middle of the slide. Don't move it, but replace it's default "Text" with "extra text"

5. Now, open Pages and create a new document using the "Blank" template. Should look a little like this now.

User uploaded file

5. Now, drag to select the three text boxes in the Keynote document, do a Command-C for copy, then make the Pages document active by clicking in it and doing a Command-V. I get this result.

User uploaded file


Do you get something like that or something different?

Nov 7, 2015 7:51 AM in response to Kyn Drake

Copy/Paste is working fine for me, so not sure where the problem may be.


This is a well known issue with the last few versions of Keynote and the latest version of Pages running in Yosemite or El Capitan. It may be working for you but many users have this problem, as do I.


copying text from Keynote into pages does not work

copying text from Keynote into any other application does work

copying text from any other application except Keynote into pages does work

Keynote doesn't copy and paste to Pages?

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.