Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with pages

Would like to open these documents

amethysts — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 14:36:41 -0800

I have some .pages documents and do not have Apple Pages to open them with. This question was asked back in 2005 but I was wondering if anyone has solved this problem yet. Already tried a bunch of online doc->PDF converters, and downloaded OpenOffice, to no avail. I'm on Windows XP.

If worse comes to worse I can just wait for the person to respond to my email. If it was an emergency I would get on the train and go to my school's computer lab, but I don't have a lot of time and it's cold and dark out.

Is there a way to do this without going outside? Thanks for your help.

Save the footnotes

synecdoche — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 07:28:28 -0800

Is there any way to solve Pages' funny behaviour with long footnotes? For a variety of reasons, I prefer to use Pages to Microsoft Word. For the most part, I'm happy with the program, but it does have one bug(?) that's really irritating: it doesn't seem to know what to do with long footnotes.

What seems to happen is this: if a footnote is longer than the remaining space on a page, Pages breaks up the text so that the footnoted word (and its footnote) is on the next page. As a result, there's a significant chunk of white space at the bottom of the page before the footnote. I think what should happen is that the footnote should be split over two pages, but Pages seems to be incapable of doing this.

I've done some googling and asked on the Apple Support Forums but haven't had any luck solving this problem. The only other option seems to be to convert the footnotes to endnotes but I'd like to see if I can work things out and keep the footnotes as they are what I prefer to use for this particular document.

Does anybody here have any ideas of ways to fix it? (I have submitted a "suggestion" to Apple but I doubt this is likely to get fixed before the next version of Pages, if then.)

My presentation is at NOON today!

BostonTerrier — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 06:12:20 -0800

I made a poster using Apple iWorks Pages. The default size (and the only size I'm able to print) is 8.5 x 11. How can I get this poster onto quarter sheets; four images of it onto a single 8.5 x 11 sheet?

how many pages in a website?

jak68 — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 18:38:27 -0800

geeks, help! how can I (relatively quickly) get a rough idea of how many pages are in a particular website? (more) Googling around, I found and tried this site:
http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/
which basically does what i'm looking for (its a site-map generator, which I dont care about the sitemap, but it does tell you roughly the number of pages in the site, which is what i'd like to know). However, there the free version is limited to sites that have less than 500 pages. Booh.

Any ideas what I could use for larger sites? A program or some kind of analytics tool online? Preferably free of course. Thanks!

Outline format in Pages '08?

oneirodynia — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 10:52:12 -0800

How do I make an outline in Pages '08? I'm trying to make the basic (I., A., 1.) sort of outline. Attempting to use inspector to make a list, but all I can do is make the first level and move it around. I'm unable to make sub -points show up at all.

What to do with the Facebook Sushi page?

cdemay — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 20:51:52 -0800

I am the creator of the largest Facebook Sushi page (with 900,000+ fans); If you were me, what would you do with this power and responsibility? :) Facebook is the largest and fastest-growing social networking site in the world. Millions of people use Facebook everyday to keep up with friends, upload photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet.

I am the creator of the largest and fastest-growing Facebook Sushi page

Since creating the page in August 2008, more than 900,000 Facebook users have become "fans" of my Sushi page, making it one of the top 50 most popular and fastest growing products on Facebook. (More than 10,000 fans add themselves each day.)

As the page owner, I can reach all these Sushi fans directly through the application. I can also manage targeted ads, develop integrated content, and engage a global fan base at a scale unavailable through any other medium.

* Here are the demographics:

Female/Male/Total
65% 35%
13-17 16% 8% 24%
18-24 26% 13% 40%
25-34 17% 10% 27%
35-44 5% 3% 7%
45+ 1% 1% 2%

Mar. 30 Mar. 29
Page Views 2,918 2,869

* Those page views are representative of visitation when I have no ads, no posts, and no solicitation emails to the group. Basically, ~3,000 people a day are ACTIVELY SEEKING the page, unprompted... unadvertised.

* As a test of membership response to posts, I posted a news link (about sushi being the "fast food of the future", from an Adelaide newspaper)... Within an hour, 1,000 people have taken the time to mark the article with "I Like This"... and over 150 took the time to comment on the article, again, within the first hour.

So, if you were me, what would you do with this power and responsibility? :)

How to find the number of pages in back issues of magazines.

imjosh — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 05:44:36 -0800

Please help me find out how many pages are in back issues of several popular magazines. I'm doing some research into shrinking magazine size and one portion of this is to try and find the number of pages in several magazines, specifically; Blender, Esquire, WIRED, Maxim and SPIN. Ideally I'd love to know the number of pages v. ads in every issue but I think that's a reach.

Do you know where I could track this information down?

Is there a certain person on a magazine staff who I should approach to try and find this?

Do you have the last 12 issues of any of these and can help me out?

Perhaps I should hire an Amazon turker...

How to create my own books for Classics.app?

tksh — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 19:45:41 -0800

How would I automate converting Project Gutenberg books into ebooks for Classics.app on the iPhone? Or more specifically, I have recently finished reading some classics on the wonderful Classics program for the iPhone/iTouch and I want to start adding my own favourites for on-the-go reading.

I've figured out that each book in Classics is just a collection of PDF files, one for each chapter, and a simple XML file that acts as a chapters index. The PDF page have a specific size and I have a Pages template and some defined styles that have the right margin, page size, font size, styling and all.

I've done a simple book with a few chapters as a test and they showed up great but it was incredibly tedious. Basically, for each chapter:

Create a new blank document in Pages and apply the saved page size settings

Copy and paste the chapter text into the document

Apply a title style to the chapter heading and a paragraph style to everything else

Run a quick find-and-replace to convert straight quotes into smart quotes

Save file with relevant meta info (in case I need to manually touch-up)

Finally, print as PDF with relevant meta info

Is there any way to automate all this? I'm OK with scripting and am willing to learn Latex if that is the way but I'd rather use Applescript and use the Pages engine to format, hyphenate and style everything.

Batch Facebook Events Upload?

furtive — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 20:19:57 -0800

How do I generate events for a Facebook page from our database? I'm having a hard time finding any tools that can do this, or allow me to import data in large batches. We have about three events a week to put up with four months of data ready, and would prefer not to do it all by hand.

Cell Phone Only for My Business?

imjustsaying — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 15:02:36 -0800

Should I ditch my business land phone line? I am self employed in a creative field and work out of my home. I have clients visit my studio around half a dozen times a year at most.

I do no mass market advertising, and the 10% of my business which doesn't originate via word of mouth or my online web site presence comes from referrals; almost without exception.

I've had a dedicated business phone line, phone number, and yellow pages directory listing for over 20 years. At this point, it seems like nearly all of the calls I receive on that line are either solicitations, or occasional calls from my regular clients. I'd have no problem giving clients who do not currently have my cell phone number that number.

I'd like to give up my business land line forever. But, when I've brought this topic up on a few professional forums, I've always been emphatically urged to maintain the 20+ year old business line and its print directory listing. The only calls I get as a result of my yellow pages listing are people looking for low ball estimates or for specific services which I do not perform.

Is it insane (or just bad business) to give up my land line?

Most importantly, if I list my cell phone number on my web site am I inviting all manner of cell spam? Are there other negative or deal breaking implications of doing so?>

As time passes I am increasingly inclined to dump my land line. For substantially less than the price of my current cell plan plus the land line cost, I can get a really sweet cell plan with plenty of data capability.

Are there other factors I should consider?

Help me un-display my address on google/WhitePages.com

xm — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 14:16:04 -0800

When I google my own name the first entry is from WhitePages.com which is displaying my address and phone number (I have a landline). I don't want it displayed!!!! How do I get rid of it??

Hang my bullets, please.

chrisfromthelc — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 19:35:21 -0800

Hanging bullets in iWork's Pages 08? How in the hell can I do a hanging bullet in Pages '08? I can't seem to drag the tab past the page margin indicator.

How to make my content stay where I want it?

cuddles.mcsnuggy — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 18:02:41 -0800

Adobe InDesign: Why, when moving pages around within a document, will it cause the design elements (all frames, text boxes, graphics, etc.) on the following pages to shift 1/8" to the left or right? This has been seriously vexing me for 2 years now. I have a 72-page document (magazine) with the master set for a basic 2-column layout for each page, 2-page spreads, small footer on the bottom of the page. Nothing fancy. The column guides are the same size and location on each page.

When I have the pages filled with text, graphics, all my elements; of course sometimes I need to move the pages around. My problem: Often when I move the pages (ie: move page 18 to before page 5, etc.) it will cause everything on a group of the pages after the spot I changed, to shift 1/8" to the left on the left pages, and 1/8" to the right on the right pages of those subsequent spreads.

And the thing is: This doesn't happen *every* time I move pages around (just much of time) . And it doesn't cause the text/graphics/etc. to shift on the entire rest of the magazine; usually just for the next 5-15 ish pages, which varies. I'll have to go and manually move all the elements back within the column guides on the pages that got messed up.

I can't see a pattern for when it happens either: it happens whether I'm moving 1, 2, 3, or more pages (an odd or even number); it happens whether I'm moving pages up or down in the page order. Thinking there was some hidden setting on some of the pages, I've tried deleting all pages, reinserting new blank ones, and rebuilding the content from scratch. Doesn't work.

I know about the "shuffle" option in the pages pallette. And if I turn off shuffle, my text/graphics/etc. seem to stay put when I move the pages around. But then I can't maintain proper 2-page spreads any more.

This is maddening! I've searched MeFi, Google, and InDesign's own help screens to no avail. I'm a self-taught user, so maybe this is a bit of common troubleshooting covered in formal training: But can anyone help me figure out:

1. Why is this happening? Has this happened to anyone else?
2. How to stop my text/graphics/etc. from shifting every time I move a page, and let me shuffle the pages so that I can maintain the 2-page spreads.

I'm using InDesign CS2 version 4.0.5. Many thanks in advance for your guidance, oh wise MeFites!

Autocomplete in Pages?

spaceman_spiff — Fri, 09 May 2008 19:14:29 -0800

How can I get Pages to mimic Open Office's autocomplete? I've recently made a partial switch from Open Office/NeoOffice to Pages. I like the way Pages does styles, and it's a lot lighter weight on my Powerbook than OO/NO. But it's missing my absolute to-die-for favorite feature - autocomplete.

In Open Office, as I type, words longer than a certain threshold are added to a list; if I type the first 3-4 letters of a word in the list later on in a document, the rest of the word appears highlighted after my cursor, and I can choose to hit enter and complete the word, or just keep typing. It's absolutely fabulous, and my wrists are complaining bitterly about Pages' lack of a similar feature. Is there a plugin or hack - or best of all a checkbox I missed - for Pages that would replicate this feature?

trimming pdf's?

washburn — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 16:43:47 -0800

Without "pro" software, how can I trim pages from large pdf files? There are a lot of public domain pdf texts out there on the internet, but they are frequently scans of old "collected works" editions, etc., with a thousand pages or so.

How can I use free software to save just, say, 100 pages of a thousand public domain .pdf?

I've not yet had much help trying to use openoffice Writer or Foxit reader/editor (the option is blocked out or available only to paid Foxit users, I think).

Thanks much for any help.

My Mac is starting up so s-l-o-w-l-y

pman78 — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 22:25:44 -0800

My Mac PB takes about 10 minutes to start up and then another 5 to load mac mail or safari. Am I about to crash? Here's the scoop...I'm not a techie so I'll do the best I can. I have an Intel PB about 2 years old. OS 10.4.10. About a month ago I realized that my HD was almost full and began to get rid of stuff to free up space. I've emptied my trash. I now have 13 GB free; 97 GB used. When I start up my mac it takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r (10-15 minutes?) to load up and get me to the desktop. And then it takes about 5 minutes more to load any program. Once it's up and going it seems to be fine with the exception of loading any web pages which seem to take about 30-45 seconds for Safari to even recognize the web address and then it's slow to load the pages. I'm pretty sure the two things (slow start up and slow loading web pages) are connected as they both started happening around the same time. I've run disk utilities, I've run Onyx, I've zapped my pram, I've backed up, I've removed most files and projects from my desktop....nothing seems to help. To my best recolection all of this trouble seemed to start when I started throwing stuff in the trash to free up space. Before that it was fine. Does this make any sense? Is my Mac about to die a painful death? Should I re install the OS? Or is it something else? Any help is very much appreciated....

Insert an in-line image into a table cell using Pages on OS X?

PuGZ — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 05:24:19 -0800

How can I insert an image into a table cell using Pages (OS X) without it becoming the cell background? I want it to be a regular in-line image, but can't figure out how to do this for the life of me.

How to save all cached pages for a particular domain?

Ø — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 22:53:10 -0800

A web site with lots of useful information recently went offline, but the cached pages are still available from Google. Is there a program (for either OS X or Windows) that will automatically save all of the cached pages on Google associated with a particular domain?

PAGES ATE MY BABY, I mean, paper.

bash — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 18:13:12 -0800

My mac ate my paper via Pages. now it is gone. help. I was using Pages to write a paper, and I went to print it, and it "unexpectedly quit," but I don't know how to recover the paper. Does anybody know how to get it back? It was really good. Real nice paper. Don't want to do it again. HELP. Why doesn't Pages automatically save while you write? I hate Pages now.

Software Reccomendations: Writing a Paper While Keeping An Outline

rossination — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 12:19:44 -0800

Need toms help finding a good program or method for maintaining an outline structure within an essay. As you can tell, I'm having a hard time describing my problem. Basically, I want to be able to write a paper in an outline format, and then expand that outline out into paragraphs. At any time, though, I'd like to be able to go back to the outline "view" of the paper and be able to do things like drag sections around, reorder them, etc.

It seems like Omnioutliner, Word, or Pages should include something like this, but they don't seem to (I'm on a mac, obviously). Basically, I'm just looking for some embedded structure to be preserved when I go from outline -> double-spaced MLA style paper.

I'm not writing dissertations here, either. This is mostly for simple, easy-peasy 5-10 page papers.

Any ideas? Obviously, free or cheap programs are appreciated. I'm seeing some of these types of features in "novel writer" programs like Ulysses and Scrivener, but those still seem like overkill for the small scale that I'm working at. Plus, they're a bit more than I'd like to spend (even Scrivener). But, if you can convince me that it's worth a second look, go for it.

[Also, should this go in "writing & language", or "computers and internet"?]

Software for highlighting and note taking on the web?

herbiehancock00 — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 20:33:04 -0800

Software for highlighting and note taking on the web? I read ALOT on the web. Is there a software or service which allows me to save a webpage onto my harddrive, highlight important points, and leave post it notes, bubbles, or whatever kind of comments on the highlighted points? I want to start taking notes and retaining the information I read online.

Rotating the view of pages in Illustrator

ottereroticist — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 10:56:49 -0800

Is there a way to rotate my view of a page in Adobe Illustrator? I'm using Adobe Illustrator CS2 (12.0.0) on a Mac (OS/X 10.4.8) to edit a multi-page PDF (created by someone else) that is rotated 90 degrees. This means that the visual bottom of each page is on the right side of my monitor, making it a literal pain in the neck to edit.

Is there a way to rotate the way I view the page, without having to change the page layout from portrait to landscape, then select and rotate all the objects? In other words, can I change the orientation I see without having to change the actual document layout?

If not, is there an easy way to change the document layout, then change it back again? I'll have to do this for 28 pages, and I want to end up with a document that's laid out the same way it was when I started.

Many thanks!

How to print an Apple Pages document as a book?

ezrakilty — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 15:46:08 -0800

How to print a document created in Apple Pages through a POD service like Lulu? I spent dozens of hours creating a document in Apple Pages, hoping to send it to Lulu and have a single copy printed. When I uploaded my PDF to Lulu, though, I got a message saying that they couldn't handle PDFs that were generated from Pages. The same happened whether I used Pages' built-in "Export to PDF..." feature or used the Print dialog's "Save as PDF" button.

I tried running the document through ImageMagick to convert it from PDF to PDF, hoping it would be stripped of whatever taint Pages had left on it, but that didn't work either (perhaps it did nothing at all).

Does anyone know a way I can get around this without re-creating my document in another app? For example, is there a way to transform the PDF into one that Lulu can't complain about? Or, I'd happily use another service if I could find one that could do a single copy (100 pages, B&W) for no more than $20 or so.

Time Regained

BackwardsCity — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 10:13:21 -0800

How many pages can you read in an hour? The professor I work for is considering assigning reading by the hour in her course next semester, rather than by the page. She wants to get a sense of how much people can read in a given timespan, as well as what sort of range would result.

(The book in question will be Proust's In Search of Lost Time, if you want to factor that in.)

How do publishers make rough-cut pages?

kaufmajm — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 07:55:23 -0800

BookFilter: I have a book ("The Essential Confucius" by Thomas Cleary) that has rough-cut pages. Instead of the pages being perfectly square, the outer edge looks raw and uneven. It's a really neat effect, and makes the book feel older and more weathered than it really is. Does anyone know how publishers produce these rough-cut pages?