My iMac scale is incorrect in Pages

Hello Doctor,

'twas ever so.

The magnification numbers are not very accurate. The actual size of the screen depends on the magnification you set, the physical size of the screen, and probably other factors as well.

On this machine—a 15" diagonal MBPro with retina, 100% shows a US Letter (8 1/2") width page in approximately 5 1/2 inches of space. 125% give a closer approximation of 'actual' size, packing those 8.5 inches into just over 7" of screen space. 150% is still 3/16" short of the actual 8.5 inches of the page, but also pushes the bottom third of a page (3 3/4 inches) off the bottom of the screen.

On the other side of the room, Pages '09 (previous version) produces these page widths for the same 8 1/2 x 11 inch US Letter size sheet:

100%: 6 1/8"

125%: 8"

150%: 9 1/8"

If the on screen size is important, you can get a closer match by choosing "Fit width" from the pop-up menu in the View magnification box, then dragging the windo's right boundary right or left to make the working part of the window the exact actual width of your page. On my MBP, that resulted in a 152% figure in the box. YMMV.

Regards,

Barry

Windows does not show the scale correctly anymore than Mac OSX does.

It is all relative to the resolution of your screen.

Each System assumes a certain resolution relative to the size of the objects/documents. It may be simply that your PC simply has a lower resolution screen, most PCs have cheap displays, and is by coincidence closer to real size.

Peter

Hi doctor_tolik,

Use a real sheet of paper to set the width of the screen view.

First, make the Pages window as large as your screen will allow (I don't mean Full Screen view).

• Drag the Pages window by the Title Bar to the left of the screen
• Drag the right edge of the Pages window to the right of the screen. If you use the Format Panel (on the right) leave it on show.

Resize the Zoom to show actual (real life) size.

Here is the method with a Trackpad (It will be different with a mouse).

• System Preferences > Trackpad > Scroll & Zoom > Zoom in or out (my settings are Pinch with two fingers.).
• Hold a sheet of (real) paper over the screen document. I used A4 paper (21 cm wide).
• Pinch the Trackpad to make the width of the screen document match the width of the real sheet of paper. On my machine, 158% zoom works.

• Save the document.
• Close the document.
• Reopen the document. The screen view of the page will still match a real sheet of paper.

• Unfortunately, this actual size zoom does not Save as Template.
• Unfortunately, if you hide and then show the Format Panel, this actual size zoom is lost.
• Unfortunately, if you resize the Pages window, this actual size zoom is lost.

Tested on a MacBook Pro (13 inch, mid 2012) in Pages 5.6.2 under OS X El Capitan 10.11.5. Other machines and other operating systems may require a different zoom from 158%.

Regards,

Ian.