iWork '05: The Missing Manual

Chapter 1. Creating a Basic Document

With all the talk about Pages' collection of gorgeous, colorful templates and its streamlined page-layout abilities, it's easy to forget that beneath the program's stylish veneer beats the heart of a regular word processor. One of the great things about Pages is its ability to let you produce extravagantly formatted productions or simple text documents—the choice is yours. Whatever the final form, the basic techniques you use to create, format, and edit those documents are the same.

Creating a Document

When you launch Pages, the program greets you with a blank document window and an unfurling Template Chooser sheet (Figure 1-1). Apple's professional designers filled this pantry with a delicious array of templates, preformatted documents you can use to get a head start on your next writing project. Here you can choose to start your document from scratch with a blank page (by choosing the Blank template) or use one of the 40 starter documents (by choosing any of the other templates).

Pages responds by opening a new document window based on your chosen template and gives it the name "Untitled." In addition to giving you lots of design options in this document smorgasbord, these templates are built to last. When you choose a template, Pages actually opens a clone of the original. That way, you can work on your copy, safe in the knowledge that the blueprint is locked away—unmodified—ready for the next time you need it. (You can modify those templates ...