I LOVE PAGES. I USE IT DAILY. I ENJOY SMART ANNOTATION BETA. YIPPIE! But...
For some time now Pages on my iPad Pro does not organize my "recent" documents accurately according to date. Now Recents includes documents from 2018 and just 3 from 2019, only one of which I opened yesterday. Notice that I add to 3 (THREE) documents daily. I have figured out how to find these by going to Browse for one, but for the third document I have to go to Browse, select iCloud Drive, select Pages and select a particular folder and then am able to find the document.
Immediately after I close Pages, these two searched-for documents retreat into Browse again, so if I want to see these two documents I repeat the little Browse searches identically. Previously Recents actually included all recently used documents. Why? This problem occurred with my iPhone X for a few days, but an upgrade to iOS 12.1.2 fixed it. I have been not-so-patiently waiting for the correction to occur on IPad Pro on which I have upgraded to iOS 12.1.1. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE FIX THIS. I BEG YOU!
You must be doing something wrong...because I can do finely on my iPad and phone...watch videos it will help I my helped me...the bugs need to be updated..but I think after all the app is fine!!! It’s ok about your review about this app...it’s all your opinion!! And I respect that!! But please don’t say that the app is stupid or not working...your probably not using it correctly...watch videos!! It helped me! It must help you!! If not...then you probably didn’t pick the right videos to watch...they are probably not saying it correctly to you..so take my word and try what I said..If it doesn’t work try asking friends...I don’t have anything else to offer....good day...or good night....or good morning....................……….!
As a former graphic designer who used PageMaker, InDesign and even Pages professionally on the Mac for many years, I was shocked when I downloaded Pages to my iPad for the very first time and saw how simple-minded its typographic controls are. Line-spacing, to mention an obvious example, can only be adjusted in 0.25-line increments, which is practically useless to anyone who knows anything at all about typography. Even TextEdit, the simplest of all basic word processors, can adjust line-spacing by tenths.
Meanwhile, there are no tracking adjustments at all. Even Bean, another simple word processing app that offers better typographic adjustments than TextEdit, includes finely-calibrated tracking adjustments. These two features, tracking and line spacing, are absolutely basic essentials for any “desktop publishing” app worthy of the name. Pages for iPad gets a big “FAIL!” for these unforgivable omissions. It is nothing more than a basic word processor with a few fancy templates thrown in.
I won’t get into the extremely mediocre font selection, or the lack of another feature as basic as default document layout and font parameters that are automatically applied to all new basic documents. I could write a book about how anemic and inadequate Pages for iPad truly is, but I won’t.
I use Pages on my iPad to record research notes and write short reviews. For some reason, Pages will not consistently save my work. There is no save button so that I can make sure a document actively saves when I exit the program. Recently, I lost 2 important documents when I was almost finished with them. My wife came to pick me up, so I closed my iPad. When I opened everything back up a few seconds later I was greeted with a message that document was deleted. I searched and the lastest autosave only has the first 2 lines of the first paragraph of the document!! I have been noticing this problem over the last few weeks as I have been using the app more than usual.
To be clear, I did not close Pages and I did not exit the document. I blanked the screen, walked to the car, and went back into my iPad...poof! Pages had backed out of my document and deleted it. Why?! Why would it just dump the data when it had trouble saving to iCloud or whatever caused the problem? Completely unreliable!! Looking for a more professional solution.
The absence of a global search-and-replace feature is extremely annoying. Having to pick through even a relatively short document to do something that can be accomplished in Word in a few seconds makes no sense. Also, the lack of a TAB feature is puzzling, especially since I can block and paste something from another document and the tabs import along with everything else.
A new bug has developed. Almost inevitably, a document will lock up after a few minutes: you can no longer scroll, edit, or access any of the other functions. You cannot even exit. When this happens, I have to close down the app and then close it completely, using the double-tap function of the iPhone. This has become a serious problem.
Although I haven’t yet used Pages’ complex templates, it has worked very well for documents of more basic to moderate levels of difficulty such as lists, outlines, handouts, posters, and letters. Notwithstanding, in creating these documents, I have made use of a number of the more creative features.
I sometimes add the pre-made shapes that can be altered in a variety of interesting ways. I add rather sophisticated drawings to personal letters just for fun or to illustrate something I’m writing about. The wrap-around feature works very well when using these and other features available within the app. When creating posters I can take advantage of the many font choices, colors, sizes, and layout features to make them as lively and fun, or sophisticated and sedate, as desired.
I find Pages to be fairly intuitive but am able to quickly access user guidelines when needed for further instructions when needed. I sometimes, but not often, run into problems; these, however are usually corrected without much difficulty once I become more acquainted with a particular feature I’m using.
All in all, I am very pleased to have discovered Pages and look forward to discovering other ways in which I will be able to use its other document types and features in future.
I’m happy to update, and say that the Apple Pencil works again as a fine selection tool, the “mouse” of the iPad, with just a flip of a switch in the Settings app. Thank you to the development team for listening and adapting!
If you’re looking for an office suite that meets the majority of content creation needs, and aren’t locked into MS Office for one reason or another, then you can’t do better than the free, Apple iWork suite. It does what it is designed to do, and does it well.
While MS Office is utilitarian at its core, iWork’s design embraces creativity and presentation at every level. It is much easier to create something that looks good in iWork than it is in Office. I’ve created simple advertisements in Pages on my iPad Pro, and sent them straight to the printer.
On the flip side, some feature omissions limit iWork from being a five-star product. Most, you’ll likely never run into, as they’re useful to a small group of users. Others, though, like Numbers not having a hide/unhide key command, just don’t make sense.
Ultimately, I recommend you give iWork a try, if you haven’t already. It’s free, so there’s nothing to lose, and you may well find you like it better for your uses than some of the paid alternatives.
Okay... so we’ve all known that autocorrect has had its issues. I wrote a document in pages. Being an English major and a writer, I, of course, make mistakes. However, this application immediately began marking words as simple as “where” as a spelling error. When I clicked on it, we’re was one option. I know the difference between where and we’re. We’re did not fit the context of the sentence. That was a particularly outrageous example, but there were SO many. Clicking on the words that pages marked as incorrect, I was given words that made no sense at all. I even got paranoid and started looking these words up myself. A good word processing program should check grammar, punctuation AND spelling. If this is Apple’s genius default application and it can’t come close to getting spelling down, there’s no way I could use this as my default. Come on Apple. With what these devices cost you can at least do as well as windows, don’t you think? Very sad day.
All I want from Pages is to use it as a Word Processor. A couple of releases back, it served that purpose. The update prior to 4.0 made Pages unuseable. I could not open previously saved documents.
When 4.0 came out, I upgraded in the hope that I would once again be able to use Pages and have access to my documents. Happy to announce that after the upgrade my documents are still available. I was beginning to wonder. I was also beginning to wonder about Apple. What is going on ???
Now I have started a new document. I have entered several paragraphs. When I see an error that I want to correct in a previous paragraph I use the Apple Pencil to back to that spot but am taken into Smart Annotations Beta. I am presented with a host of drawing tools: pens, markers, brushes, etc.
All I want to do is go back and make a text edit in my document; I do not want to Smart Annotate. I have discovered a button to turn off Smart Annotate (hooray !), but though I turn it off, it jumps back into S.A. Mode.
I have looked into MS Word, but the reviews say it is buggy. And it has a subscription. Blah. Apple seems to be adding features to its software that make the product less desirable and unuseable. Why am I forced into using Smart Annotate ?
Are there any other WPs available for the iPad ? I am having unpleasant experiences using Pages, a product that I once enjoyed.
First off... I love pages and totally recommend it, but... the new update makes it harder to use and switch documents between folders. Before it worked kind of like an apple product’s home screen (which made it super simple) and you could easily navigate anything. But now... you have to press and hold and find the little move button before you could move it (which takes forever when you’re moving a lot of documents at once).
Secondly... I find that every once in a while it will close the document because it “cannot save to cloud”(or something like that) and won’t save the last two lines I typed. I don’t know if it’s just a glitch or what... but it’s very annoying when you forget the two lines it deleted.
That was a lot of negative... but I’m sorry, I really do love pages, and other than those two things, 5 stars!
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