I'm using Pages 6.3.1 on MacOS Sierra (10.12.6) and trying to transition from MS Word. In Word there was a command to jump to a specific page number (Option+Command+G).
In Pages, the Thumbnails panel is fine for short documents, but for lengthier ones it's useful to be able to simply jump to, say, page 154.
Does someone know what the Pages equivalent is?
Thank you in advance.
MacBook Pro, macOS Sierra (10.12.6)
Pages is not based on Word, nor is it a Word clone. There is no “go-to” page number feature in Pages v5+, or v6.3.1. You either click on a page number in the generated Table of Contents, or you enable thumbnail view and scroll to the indicated page number. Just a Pages user discovering another missing Word feature. 😉
In Pages '09, there was a Page x of y in the bottom status panel. One could click on this, and it would transform to a goto window where one could directly input the target page number. Apple never carried this feature forward, along with about 100 other dropped features.
Pages is not based on Word, nor is it a Word clone. There is no “go-to” page number feature in Pages v5+, or v6.3.1. You either click on a page number in the generated Table of Contents, or you enable thumbnail view and scroll to the indicated page number. Just a Pages user discovering another missing Word feature. 😉
In Pages '09, there was a Page x of y in the bottom status panel. One could click on this, and it would transform to a goto window where one could directly input the target page number. Apple never carried this feature forward, along with about 100 other dropped features.
First, thanks for the information. It's a shame that it doesn't have this feature. (After all it is called "Pages.")
It's clearly not a problem for most people and situations. Most docs are probably under five or six pages. But with Microsoft now telling folks they're not supporting the older versions of Word – and going with a subscription model – I was hoping that Pages, with its time on the market, would be more feature-rich, not less.
Given your knowledge about these apps, do you have any suggestions for other options?
Thanks again.
I have listed your options for direct page access in Pages v6.3.1. There is another approach. Either open your Pages document directly in Preview, or export to PDF, and then open that PDF in Preview. From the View menu, choose Contact Sheet, and by default, you will get four-up legible documents with page numbers per Preview page. Keep this open, concurrent with your Pages document.
In addition to the Office 365 subscription plan, Microsoft does offer a single purchase of Office 2016 for Mac. Word has been in continuous development for 35 years, while Pages v5/v6 since 2013. Because Pages is a free application, and engineers cost real money, do not expect significant feature updates where no revenue stream can justify the expense.
I no longer rush to recommend the free LibreOffice, which is an MS Office superset, and under one name or another, has been in continuous development since 1992. It does have very good Word document compatibility, better than Pages, but it will cost you significantly in learning curve, with little to no support, and documentation that is now an entire version out of date.
There's an "Apps for Writers" section in the App Store that you might peruse. Not included there, for some reason, are two versions of Nisus Writer (Express and Pro) and Mellel 4, which may be the closest things to a traditional word processing app on offer. None of them is a Word clone, but you may find the feature sets of Mellel and Nisus Writer Pro to be attractive.
I used the lighter, Express version of Nisus Writer for years, mostly for fiction and short-article writing, and it got the job done — it was particularly good at working with .docx files flying back and forth between me and the publishing world. But nowadays when I open the app it feels terribly dated, though it's still being actively supported (as far as I know).
As you'll see in the Apps for Writers section, the evolution of word processing software, at least on the Mac, has taken some interesting turns, and the currently hot apps — e.g. Scrivener, IA Writer — bare very little resemblance to Word or indeed to any traditional word processor. Pages actually occupies a sort of middle ground in this new landscape, somewhere between no-frills (or as we now say, "distraction free") and feature-laden. I've come to like it a lot over the past few years. YMMV!
Cheers
How do I "Go To" a page number?
