With Google Docs, you can write, edit, and collaborate wherever you are. Do more, together With Google Docs, everyone can work together in the same document at the same time. From the Finder, Control-click the file, then choose Open With > Pages. If Pages is the only word processor on your Mac, you can just double-click the file. From the Pages for Mac app, choose File > Open, select the file, then click Open. If a file is dimmed, it’s not a compatible format.
Some of us are old enough to recall life before word processors. (It wasn’t that long ago.) Consider this sentence:
How did we survive in the days before every last one of us had access to word processors and computers on our respective desks?
That’s not a great sentence — it’s kind of wordy and repetitious. The following sentence is much more concise:
It’s hard to imagine how any of us got along without word processors.
The purpose of this mini-editing exercise is to illustrate the splendor of word processing. Had you produced these sentences on a typewriter instead of a computer, changing even a few words would hardly seem worth it. You would have to use correction fluid to erase your previous comments and type over them. If things got really messy, or if you wanted to take your writing in a different direction, you would end up yanking the sheet of paper from the typewriter in disgust and begin pecking away anew on a blank page.
Word processing lets you substitute words at will, move entire blocks of text around with panache, and apply different fonts and typefaces to the characters. You won’t even take a productivity hit swapping typewriter ribbons in the middle of a project.
Before running out to buy Microsoft Word (or another industrial-strength and expensive) word processing program for your Mac, remember that Apple includes a respectable word processor with OS X. The program is TextEdit, and it call s the Applications folder home.
The first order of business when using TextEdit (or pretty much any word processor) is to create a new document. There’s really not much to it. It’s about as easy as opening the program itself. The moment you do so, a window with a large blank area on which to type appears.
Have a look around the window. At the top, you see Untitled because no one at Apple is presumptuous enough to come up with a name for your yet-to-be-produced manuscript.
Notice the blinking vertical line at the upper-left edge of the screen, just below the ruler. That line, called the insertion point, might as well be tapping out Morse code for “start typing here.”
Indeed, you have come to the most challenging point in the entire word processing experience, and it has nothing to do with technology. The burden is on you to produce clever, witty, and inventive prose, lest all that blank space go to waste.
Okay, got it? At the blinking insertion point, type with abandon. Type something original like this:
It was a dark and stormy night
If you typed too quickly, you may have accidentally produced this:
It was a drk and stormy nihgt
Fortunately, your amiable word processor has your best interests at heart. See the dotted red line below drk and nihgt? That’s TextEdit’s not-so-subtle way of flagging a likely typo. (This presumes that you’ve left the default Check Spelling as You Type activated in TextEdit Preferences.)
You can address these snafus in several ways. You can use the computer’s Delete key to wipe out all the letters to the left of the insertion point. (Delete functions like the backspace key on the Smith Coronayou put out to pasture years ago.) After the misspelled word has been quietly sent to Siberia, you can type over the space more carefully. All traces of your sloppiness disappear.
Delete is a wonderfully handy key. You can use it to eliminate a single word such as nihgt. But in this little case study, you have to repair drk too. And using Delete to erase drk means sacrificing and and stormy as well. That’s a bit of overkill.
Use one of the following options instead:
- Use the left-facing arrow key (found on the lower-right side of the keyboard) to move the insertion point to the spot just to the right of the word you want to deep-six. No characters are eliminated when you move the insertion point that way. Only when the insertion point is where it ought to be do you again hire your reliable keyboard hit-man, Delete.
- Eschew the keyboard and click with the mouse to reach this same spot to the right of the misspelled word. Then press Delete.
Now try this helpful remedy. Right-click anywhere on the misspelled word. A list appears with suggestions. Single-click the correct word and, voilà, TextEdit instantly replaces the mistake. Be careful in this example not to choose dork.
The EPUB format is an open digital book (eBook) standard from the International Digital Publishing Forum. With Pages, you can export your documents in the EPUB format so they can be read using the Books app on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, or with third-party EPUB readers. This article provides in-depth instructions for creating a book in Pages.
To quickly create a book without having to do any special formatting, you can also use predesigned book templates in Pages.
Choose your format
You can create a book using any Pages template, or you can use templates specifically designed for creating books. Portrait book templates are based on word-processing documents, and can be exported as Reflowable or Fixed layout EPUBs. Landscape book templates are based on page layout documents, and can be exported as Fixed layout EPUBs.
Choose Reflowable or Fixed layout depending on how you want your content to appear in the book.
- Reflowable: If you want your content to accommodate different devices and orientations, choose Reflowable. In a Reflowable EPUB, text size scales, and content repaginates according to the reader. Reflowable is best for documents that are mostly text.
- Fixed layout: If you want the layout of each page in your document to stay the same, regardless of the device or orientation, choose Fixed layout. In a Fixed layout EPUB, users can zoom in and out, but text and content positions are fixed and don't reflow. Fixed layout is best for image-heavy or multi-column documents.
Features not supported or changed when exported to EPUB
These features from your Pages document are removed or changed when you export to EPUB, regardless of the layout you've chosen:
- Smart fields
- Footnotes are converted to endnotes*
- Comments
- Some image effects (like shadows)
- Images greater than 4 megapixels are resized to 4 megapixels
* If you export a Fixed layout document to EPUB, footnotes aren't preserved.
Features available in Fixed Layout only
These features from your Pages document are exported to EPUB with Fixed Layout only. You can still export documents that include these features with Reflowable layout, but these features won't appear in the exported EPUB.
- Headers and footers
- Multiple columns
- Page size
- Page orientation
- Page number and page count fields
- Line spacing
- Hyphenation
- Selectable text inside shapes
- Overlapping text and objects (for example, overlapping text with an image or shape)
- Master objects
- Text wrap around objects
- Floating objects are exported as floating (instead of converting to inline like Reflowable EPUBs)
- Tab stops
- Shadows/Reflections
- Linked text boxes
- Gradient text fills, image text fills, or non-solid text outlines are converted to images.
Prepare a document
In Pages, you can export any page layout document to Fixed layout, and any word-processing document to Fixed layout or Reflowable layout. For best results when exporting as a Reflowable EPUB, use a word-processing document with inline images.
Text in Reflowable EPUBs
If you export your book as Reflowable, your text may look different when viewed in the Books app or other readers:
- Readers can select the text size they prefer while reading the book in the Books app.
- Text sizes you specify in your Pages document are converted to small, medium, or large in your book so text that is close in size within Pages may appear at the exact same size in the EPUB.
- Text colors in the book might not be identical to those in your Pages document.
- The pages in books using vertical text turn right-to-left.
- Gradient text fills, image text fills, or non-solid text outlines are converted to solid colors.
Create a table of contents
When you export to EPUB, a table of contents will automatically be created based on the entries that appear in the table of contents view in Pages. A Pages document with no entries in the table of contents view will be exported to EPUB without a table of contents.
To view this table of contents in the EPUB book in the Books app, choose View > Table of Contents on Mac, or tap the Table of Contents button on iPhone or iPad.
About chapters in Reflowable EPUBs
In a Reflowable EPUB book, chapter breaks are based on the hierarchy of styles in the table of contents of your Pages document. You can set your table contents up so that a chapter break is inserted before the title of a chapter in your EPUB book:
- In Pages, select the name of a chapter in your book.
- Apply a title or heading paragraph style such as Title, Heading, Heading 2, Heading 3, or Heading Red.
- Open the table of contents view, select the style you used, click or tap Edit, then remove any indentation.
Each time you use this style, the content that follows becomes a new chapter in the EPUB, and a page break is inserted between chapters in a Reflowable EPUB.
Use objects in Reflowable EPUBs
For best results with Reflowable EPUBs, reformat any images, shapes, or other objects in your document to make them inline objects.
- Select or insert an object.
- Click or tap the Format button .
- Click or tap Arrange.
- Select 'Move with Text.'
- Select 'Inline with Text' from the Text Wrap menu.
Add a book cover
When you export your book, you can choose the type of cover you want for your book. The cover appears in the Library in the Books app, or as the icon on their computer.
If you choose 'Choose an image', you can add a cover image from your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, or PC. Your cover image can be PDF, EPS, JPG, PSD, PNG, TIFF, or GIF format, but must be under 4 megapixels.
If you choose 'No book cover', your book uses the generic icon in the Library in the Books app.
Export to EPUB book
You can export your document in the EPUB format in Pages for Mac, Pages on iPhone or iPad, or online at iCloud.com. If you've tracked changes in the document you want to export, accept or reject any changes and stop tracking changes before you export. Tracked changes are automatically accepted if no specific action is taken.
Export with Pages for Mac
- Open your document in Pages for Mac.
- Choose File > Export To > EPUB.
- Type in the Title and Author.
- Choose the type of cover for your EPUB book. Learn more about covers.
- Choose the layout style you want to use. Learn how to choose the best layout for your project. When exporting a Page Layout document, it's automatically exported with a Fixed layout.
- (Optional) Under Advanced Options, select a Primary Category and a Language for your book.
- To make sure the fonts you chose for your document appear in the EPUB, select Embed Fonts. If you deselect Embed Fonts, your chosen font defaults to the preferred font of the reader's application. Pages can embed OpenType (OTF) and TrueType (TTF) fonts.
- Click Next.
- Enter a name for your EPUB file, then click Export.
- To view your EPUB in the Books app when it's finished exporting, double-click the file.
Export with Pages on iPhone or iPad
- Open your document in Pages.
- Tap the More button .
- Tap Export.
- Choose EPUB.
- Type in the Title and Author.
- Choose the type of cover for your EPUB book. Learn more about covers.
- Tap the layout style you want to use. Learn how to choose the best layout for your project. When exporting a Page Layout document, it's automatically exported with a Fixed layout.
- (Optional) Tap Advanced, then choose a Category and Language for your book.
- To make sure the fonts you chose for your document appear in the EPUB, select Embed Fonts. If you deselect Embed Fonts, your chosen font defaults to the preferred font of the reader's application. Pages can embed OpenType (OTF) and TrueType (TTF) fonts.
- If your document includes movies and you plan on offering your books in Apple Books, turn Apple Books Compatibility on to convert incompatible movies to images. Incompatible audio files are also removed.
- Tap Back.
- Tap Export to share your EPUB.
- To view your EPUB in the Books app when it's finished exporting, choose Copy to Books.
Export with Pages for iCloud
- Open your document in Pages for iCloud.
- Click the Tools button , then choose 'Download a Copy.'
- Click EPUB in the download window that appears.
- Type in the Title and Author.
- Choose the Cover style for your EPUB. Learn more about covers.
- Choose your layout style. Learn how to choose the best layout for your project. If you're using a Page Layout document, you must export with Fixed layout.
- (Optional) In Advanced, choose a Category and Language for your book.
- Click Download.
Publish your book
You can publish your book directly to Apple Books from Pages on your iPad, iPhone, Mac, or online at iCloud.com.