Newbie confusing Pages behavior, help?

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Level 2

157 points

Newbie confusing Pages behavior, help?

Using the blank book template in Pages 7.1 in High Sierra 10.13.6 on a 17,1 iMac.

1. I'm a little confused as to why the paragraphs seem to split when positioned next to a column with a picture and a text box below it. I wind up playing with whatever Pages calls "runaround" art or text. But sometimes the break never disappears. So I move the picture and art to right side, and the break disappears. Anyone know what is happening at "B" in the attached picture of my layout. What is the small blue icon called? It appears to be related to the paragraph break.

2. I have a keystroke chart for Pages, but wondered if there is a way to reduce spacing between display letters? I see that there is control of a group of letters, but I miss the quick Option (or Apple)+Bracket (or arrow). I have forgotten what Quark or Photoshop used for manual spacing.

3. If I cut a caption from the original flowed text to paste into a blank text box, sometimes, not only the text I selected, but the actual art disappears, or is cut. So I wind up with a caption in memory, but no picture above my blank caption box. Did I somehow select the Picture and the caption text (from original flowed body text)?

Surely you can't select text in a text box, AND a picture at the same time?

4. Related to the above, but mostly the strange reflow behavior, sometimes a picture disappears when a second picture is moved. It is no where in the ENTIRE layout that I can see. Is this related to moving items to the back or front? I see where I can tell pages manually to keep images on a page and not flow. Should I immediately tell Pages to leave the image on the page, or is there an AUTO way to order all images to stay on the page?

I like Pages for quick work. The Gold Alignment rules that show when positioning are fantastic.

iMac with Retina 5K display, macOS High Sierra (10.13.6), 17,1 Retina 5K 3.3GHz Intel i5

Posted on Aug 13, 2018 3:09 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

PeterBreis0807

Level 8

41,241 points

Aug 13, 2018 7:39 AM in response to blackxacto

The small blue icon is the anchor point for your image.

You should instead change your image to be Inline with Text and have it in its own paragraph. That way it will stay in place as the text moves and you will be able to neatly have exact space before and after the paragraph it is in, without causing problems in adjacent columns.

You have the gap in the side text because your Caption Textbox has TextWrap on it and it is sticking out just a little far to the right. For good accurate design you should size your caption box to accurately fit its column, but better would be to simply have it as text under the image which would be better Inline as I pointed out above.

Because you are using Textwrap without understanding what it does (push text and objects away a set distance) you will get oddities like objects popping off pages, sometimes off the side of the page where you can't see it.

Users have a tendency to think of elements literally. Just because it looks like a free floating object does not mean that it should or must be in a separate shape. Treat it as part of the text unless you need it to break out of the layout which is when you use anchored shapes.

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