Pages
Spend less time formatting and more time writing
30 Add a watermark to every page of a document
Just to set your levels of expectations for this tip, we haven’t uncovered a way by which Pages can actually add a real watermark – that is, a design that becomes visible when you hold the paper up to a light – to your documents! No, this just adds a light-coloured graphic automatically to every page of a word processing document – perhaps a company logo or ‘Confidential’.
The first thing to do is to prepare your graphic, and if you’re doing anything even remotely complex, the easiest way to do it is in a page layout document rather than a word processing document (even though you’ll eventually actually use it in the latter). So, create a new document, choose the Blank template and then immediately click File > Convert to Page Layout. Now prepare what you want in the watermark. It might be just the word ‘Draft’ or a more involved design, like the one we’ve prepared here. Once you’re done, select everything, group it (from the Arrange menu) and then copy and paste it into your word processing document.
If, when you do this, all the text moves around, don’t worry. With the graphic still selected, click the Format button at the top-right of your document’s window, then make sure Stay on Page (not Move with Text) is selected, and drop the Text Wrap option down to None.
Get it to the right position and size (perhaps setting it to a jaunty angle), and then tweak its opacity. For this you’ll probably need to ungroup complex objects so the Style tab shows up to enable you drag the opacity slider down. Immediately after, group everything again so you can’t break your design by dragging something out of place.
The last step is to select Arrange > Section Masters > Move Object to Section Master. Your watermark now appears on every page.
If you need to tweak it afterwards, select Make Master Objects Selectable from the Arrange > Section Masters menu.
31 Make a letterhead appear on every page of a document
You can use a similar technique, of course, to add a company logo and address details to every page of your correspondence if you’d like to, and one advantage of using the Section Master feature, as we’ve done here, is that the page elements appear to be completely ‘burned-in’ on the pages, and people can’t move them around. You just have to omit the opacity tweak step from the watermark technique. It’s easy to distribute a template and default to it when you’re starting new documents too – read on!
32 Export and import templates
Lots of what we’ll show you later in this section is helpful in setting up standard, reusable templates so that you’re not having to do the same work over and over again. Once you’ve set up your styles, letterheads and so on, you can easily share the template with others just by selecting File > Save as Template. You’ll be given the option of adding it to
33 Create media placeholders
If you frequently update the images in a document – you might be a teacher with a lesson plan template, say, or an estate agent creating listings sheets for your shop window – you should use Media Placeholders. With these, you create drop zones on a page, onto which you can drag new images. Images are immediately scaled and cropped to the correct size and have any object styles applied to them.
Set up an image how you want it to look (with crops, borders, reflections and so on), then choose Format > Advanced > Define as Media Placeholder. New images can be dropped onto this, and scaled and moved within it. Optionally, save as a template.
your Template Chooser – the gallery of options that pops up when you create a new document – or saving the file externally so you can share it with others.
Your recipient should just double-click the .template file, and they’ll be given the option of adding it to their own Template Chooser.
34 Set a default template
If all you ever use Pages for is standard word processing documents, for example, you’re probably heartily sick of creating a new document and then having to pick Blank from the Template