Pages is a word processor developed by Apple Inc. It is part of the iWork productivity suite and runs on the macOS, iPadOS and iOS

operating systems An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also inc ...

. It is also available on iCloud on the

web Web most often refers to: * Spider web, a silken structure created by the animal * World Wide Web or the Web, an Internet-based hypertext system Web, WEB, or the Web may also refer to: Computing * WEB, a literate programming system created by ...

. The first version of Pages was released in February 2005. Pages is marketed by Apple as an easy-to-use application that allows users to quickly create documents on their devices. A number of Apple-designed templates comprising different themes (such as: letters,

résumé A résumé, sometimes spelled resume (or alternatively resumé), also called a curriculum vitae (CV), is a document created and used by a person to present their background, skills, and accomplishments. Résumés can be used for a variety of re ...

s, posters and outlines) are included with Pages.

History

On January 11, 2005, Apple announced the first version of Pages, as part of iWork '05. On January 6, 2009, Apple released the fourth version of Pages as a component of iWork '09. On January 27, 2010, Apple announced a new version of Pages for iPad with a touch interface. On May 31, 2011, Apple updated the iOS version of Pages to 1.4, bringing universal binaries, allowing the app to be run on iPad, iPhone and

iPod Touch The iPod Touch (stylized as iPod touch) is a discontinued line of iOS-based mobile devices designed and marketed by Apple Inc. with a touchscreen-controlled user interface. As with other iPod models, the iPod Touch can be used as a music pl ...

devices. On October 12, 2011, Apple updated the iOS app to version 1.5, adding the iCloud "Documents in the Cloud" feature. iOS Pages was updated to version 1.6 on March 7, 2012, and will only run on iOS 5.1 or later. Pages for

OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

was updated to version 4.3 on December 4, 2012, to support Pages 1.7 for iOS, which was released on the same day. Pages for iOS 1.7.1 introduced better compatibility with Word and Pages for Mac and version 1.7.2, released on March 7, 2013, merely added stability improvements and bug fixes. On October 23, 2013, Apple released a redesign with Pages 5.0 and made it free for anyone with an iOS device. In this release, many templates, as well as some advanced features that were available in version 4.3, were not included. Some of these missing features were put back over the next releases but the current version (12.1) still lacks features from version 4.3, including the ability to select non-contiguous regions of text, advanced find/replace functions, and more.

Features

Pages is a word processor and page layout application. When Pages is first opened, users are presented with a template chooser which allows them to start with a blank document or with a predesigned template — including a basic, report, letter, résumé, envelope, business card, flyers & posters, cards, miscellaneous and a newsletter section of templates — that contains placeholder text and images which can be replaced by dragging and dropping photos from the Media Browser. The Media Browser provides quick access to media from

iTunes iTunes () is a software program that acts as a media player, media library, mobile device management utility, and the client app for the iTunes Store. Developed by Apple Inc., it is used to purchase, play, download, and organize digital mul ...

iMovie iMovie (known at times as iMovie HD) is a preinstalled video editing application developed by Apple Inc. for macOS, iOS, and iPadOS devices. It was originally released in 1999 as a Mac OS 8 application bundled with the first FireWire-enabled ...

and

Photos A photograph (also known as a photo, image, or picture) is an image created by light falling on a photosensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic image sensor, such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Most photographs are now created ...

. Users can drag and drop music, movies, and photos directly into Pages documents from the Media Browser window. Each document window contains a toolbar, which gives one-click access to commonly used functions such as inserting objects (text boxes, shapes, tables, charts, and comments), uploading the document to

iWork.com iWork is an office suite of applications created by Apple Inc. for its macOS and iOS operating systems, and also available cross-platform through the iCloud website. It includes the presentation program, presentation application Keynote (presen ...

, and adding additional pages. In addition, the document window contains a contextual format bar that allows one-click formatting of text and adjustments to images. When text is selected, the format bar enables users to choose fonts, text size, and color, and to adjust line spacing and alignment. When an image is selected, the format bar displays tools to adjust opacity, show and hide shadow and reflection effects and mask the image. A separate Inspector window provides almost all formatting options available for any element in the open document. Beginning in iWork '08, word processing and page layout are two distinct modes. In word processing mode, Pages supports headers and footers, footnotes and outline, and list creation. Users can collaborate with others on a document. Pages tracks changes by users by displaying each person's edits in different colors. Users can also add comments alongside the document. In page layout mode, users have complete control over the position of objects on the page. Images and text can be placed anywhere on the canvas. Pages used to feature several other advanced writing tools. Many of these have been stripped out of the current version. The "Full Screen" mode (introduced in Mac OS X Lion) and supported in Pages 4.1 hid the menubar and toolbars, allowing users to focus on a single document without being distracted by other windows on the screen; however, after Pages 5, full-screen mode requires the user to manually hide various panes for focused writing and the page thumbnails pane does not automatically open when the cursor is moved to the left screen edge. Earlier versions featured mail merge, which automatically populated custom fields with contact data from the Address Book or Numbers apps to create personalized documents. For example, if a user wanted to send one letter to three people, mail merge allowed the user to create a single document with placeholder fields that were populated when printing. The mail merge feature was completely removed in version 5 and it did not return until version 12.1. Tables and charts pasted from Numbers are automatically updated if the original spreadsheet is changed.

Compatibility

Pages can import some Microsoft Word documents (including Word 2007's

Office Open XML Office Open XML (also informally known as OOXML) is a zipped, XML-based file format developed by Microsoft for representing spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents. Ecma International standardized the initial version a ...

format). Pages 4 and earlier could also import AppleWorks word processing documents, and export documents to rich text, but those features were removed until Pages 6.1. Pages 5 can still export to

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

EPUB EPUB is an e-book file format that uses the ".epub" file extension. The term is short for ''electronic publication'' and is sometimes styled ''ePub''. EPUB is supported by many e-readers, and compatible software is available for most smartphones ...

and Microsoft Word DOC formats. Simple and complex mathematical equations can be written for a Pages document with macOS's Grapher, offering similar capabilities to Microsoft Equation Editor (plus 2D and 3D rendering tools only Grapher can use). As of January 2015, Pages does not support OpenDocument

file format A file format is a standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file. It specifies how bits are used to encode information in a digital storage medium. File formats may be either proprietary or free. Some file formats ...

. The only known software other than Pages which can open its files are Apple's iWork productivity suite through Apple's iCloud, LibreOffice and Jumpshare. Windows users can view and edit Pages files using iWork for iCloud via a web browser. The iCloud system can also read Microsoft Word files and convert Pages files to Microsoft Word format. Jumpshare can view Pages files. Other than accessing iCloud through a browser, no program can officially view or edit a Pages file using Windows or Linux. Some content can be retrieved from a document created in Pages '09 because a .pages file is a bundle. A user can open a .pages file in an unpackaging program or by renaming files as .zip files in Windows (XP and onwards) and will find either a .jpg or .pdf preview in its entirety for viewing and printing, although this is only possible if the creator of the .pages files elected to include a preview. The user will also find a

.xml Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. ...

file with unformatted text. This process can also be used for users of the 2008 version of Pages to open documents saved in the 2009 version of Pages, which are not backward compatible. Pages can also export documents into several formats; formatting is generally retained during the export process.

Version history

References

External links