MS Word . And while Word is definitely more complete in some aspects, Pages carries a lot of functionality that makes it more than a decent alternative for anyone looking for a capable word processor. So here are a few tips for Pages that not every Mac user knows about and that clearly show how Pages is not only a very capable word processor, but also one that can be extremely simple to use.
1. Create and Insert Watermarks on Your Pages’ Documents
Having your documents watermarked is a great way to personalize them and protect your authorship. It is also very useful if you need to indicate the purpose of your document, like when marking it as confidential for example. To insert a watermark, first insert a Text Box in your Pages document (by clicking the Text Box button at the top of it) and write the text you want to make a watermark. Once you do, give it some unique style by changing its font, size and color. Once ready, open the Inspector Panel and click on the Graphic Inspector tab as shown in the picture below. Use the slider at the bottom to set the opacity to any number you feel comfortable with (25 percent in this example). Now, select the text box itself (not the text) and then, on the Inspector Panel click on the Metrics Inspector (ruler symbol) and use the wheel on the Rotate section to rotate your text. Next, click on the Wrap Inspector tab on the Inspector Panel. There, check the In background checkbox and uncheck the Object causes to wrap section as shown below. Your watermark should already be looking almost as intended in the first place. Lastly, to embed your watermark on every page of your document, click on the Format menu on the menu bar of Pages, then click on Advanced and then select Move Objects to Section Master.
2. Protect Your Documents With a Password
While in most cases our documents are completely safe on our Macs, there can be some scenarios in which you might want to protect them with a password. For example, if you share a computer with someone else, or if the content of the document is extremely sensitive in nature, password-protecting it is definitely the reasonable thing to do. Thankfully, this option is fairly easy to implement in Pages. To do it, with your document open, click on the Inspector button on the toolbar. When the Inspector panel pops up, click on the Document Inspector tab at the top left of it and, in the Document section, head down and check the Require password to open checkbox. Once you do, a dialog box will show up for you to introduce your password, which you will need from then onwards to open that Pages document. Cool Tip: If you think your password is too easy, you can click on the Key icon and Pages will suggest a new password to you.
3. Use Table as Spreadsheets
One of the coolest tricks that Pages has up its sleeve, to help you crunch numbers when writing a document, is the spreadsheet functionality that is embedded in every table you insert. In fact, tables in Pages support a varied number of formats, so you can format yours to handle currencies, percentages, dates and more. Each of these formats allows you to tweak its settings, which lets you to start using the table as a spreadsheet right away. And there you have them. We hope you find these tips useful and stay tuned to the site for more great articles.
