Locking parts of a pages document.

If you have text as a Text Box or as text typed within a shape then provided those items have Format > Arrange > Stay on Page you will be able to select Lock from the Arrange drop-down menu.

Experiment with text within text boxes and perhaps also looking at Document RH Panel and remove the tick from Document body which will leave you with NO body text so everything then needs to be in text boxes.

I have a similar question. But I cannot find 'Stay on Page'(I have Sierra 10.12.2). There is 'Lock' in the Arrange drop-down, but that locks the content of my text box as well as its position. What I should really like is a text box (or frame?) that is locked in position or is positioned within external text, but whose contents can be changed. Is that possible?

Thanks for the advice, VikingOSX. No, I didn't require anything arcane, only a place on the left in a template for a letter where I could type in an address without the date and reference on the right moving, and which itself was locked in place so that careless typing did not make the whole address get nudged out of alignment, as was the case with a text box. So a frame in Word has simply and effectively done the trick.

Going back a bit in this string, it seems sad and rather incomprehensible that frames are not available in Pages, when they used to be so in AppleWorks — and are so now in Word and in LibreOffice. A backward step?

Yes, that was what I was referring to back in this string of messages. Or was it in another lot of messages that you said this before? But what I think is sad is that Pages (and Numbers) followed the old, and excellent, AppleWorks, but instead of enhancing the latter, it has dropped such a valuable feature. I have suggested to Apple that frames should be brought back in Pages.

That's very useful information — thank you. (BTW, I did select the text box, but I was looking at Format and Arrange in the top toolbar instead of in the sidebar on the right.) I shall experiment with LibreOffice, which I have got but have not used much.

Take advantage of the LibreOffice documentation including LibreOffice Writer manuals. All written in LibreOffice Writer.

You can exactly position a document object (e.g. Text Box) in a body of text, but as soon as you lock that document object in place, it is now immutable to content, and position change.

You won't see an Arrange tab, or its inherent Object Placement choices of Stay on Page, or Move with Text, until you select the object. To position and lock a document object into surrounding text, you must choose Stay on Page, and Text Wrap to Around. This will also reveal the lock/unlock option at the bottom of the Arrange panel.

No version of Pages provides frames. These are available in LibreOffice Writer, with substantial configuration options (e.g. multiple sections in a frame).

Thanks, VikingOSX. I shall study the LibreOffice documentation and get to know LibreOffice better. In the meantime, I have discovered that it is quite simple in MS Word (I have Word 2016 for Mac, but I think Word 2011 will be similar in this respect) to create a frame instead of a text box, lock it in place and use Borders/none to remove the border round the frame. I imagine that when I have familiarized myself with LibreOffice, I shall discover that something similar can be done there.

As you have Word 2016 for Mac (and keeping it updated, I hope), I would not waste the time on LibreOffice, unless there is some arcane feature you need that is unavailable in Word.

No version of Pages has ever offered frames.