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Help!! Just bought iWork - how to move shapes in Pages

S

srexy

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
I just lashed out for iWork and am having a devil of a time figuring out how to move a shape around a document. It's easy to move an image that I've inserted and the same seems to go for text boxes. Am I missing something? - the Help file verges on useless and Apple's decision to name it 'pages' means that Google isn't much use either.

Please help me out of my misery before I lob my MBP out of the window in my ever increasing fury...
 
Can't help much but . . .

If you create another object (line, rectangle, etc) and then click on the new object and "Select All," you'll be able to move the original object as well. I'm sure someone else has a better answer, but that is my workaround.
Dennis
 
Open up the inspector and select the text-wrapping properties. If you make it fixed on the page you can pick it up and move it around your document.
 

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I was about to post another frustrated reply but I figured it out.

In case anyone's interested - select the shape and then click on the inspector button - click on the object placement button (object with text around it) and then change the setting to "Fixed on page"
 
srexy said:
I was about to post another frustrated reply but I figured it out.

In case anyone's interested - select the shape and then click on the inspector button - click on the object placement button (object with text around it) and then change the setting to "Fixed on page"
Click to expand...

This is the main usability problem Pages have — it has two modes, word processing and page layout, but it's not obvious which mode applies when you insert an object.

Here's a tip: every page has a "text region", and if you click in it you'll get a blinking cursor. Any object placed when that cursor is blinking goes into the text flow and is restricted with regards to placement. To move this object freely, you must changed it to "fixed on page".

If you click in the margin (outside the text region) to get rid of the blinking cursor, any object you place is automatically in fixed-on-page (page layout) mode, and can be moved freely.

From what I hear, Pages 3 ('07) will make these two modes more obvious.
 
That's true.

However there is another issue which is what I thought the OP was referring to. If you make insert an image (circle, rectangle, etc.) and the "send it to the back" it somehow "embeds" the image and you can no longer select it. It is a problem that we have seen on all of the macs in our office. I'm assuming it is a bug that will need to be fixed.

That is why I suggested the "trick" above as I have no other way to move an image like this.

Indydenny
 
Indydenny said:
That's true.

However there is another issue which is what I thought the OP was referring to. If you make insert an image (circle, rectangle, etc.) and the "send it to the back" it somehow "embeds" the image and you can no longer select it. It is a problem that we have seen on all of the macs in our office. I'm assuming it is a bug that will need to be fixed.

That is why I suggested the "trick" above as I have no other way to move an image like this.

Indydenny
Click to expand...

I'll try and remember your tip when I run into that issue 🙂

Thanks for the replies - I was really getting frustrated w/the app for a while there. I have Word 04 and also indesign but am really trying to rule out Rosetta from my machine due to a few KP's recently. I figured Pages might be the magic bullet and it certainly seems a capable enough app. I've got to say tho - I tried to figure out a way to search the help files using "object", "alignment", "shape" and various permutations thereof and I couldn't for the life of me find a combination or an entry that would have given me any kind of answer. The help files need work...
 
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