Create a document

1. Click the Pages icon in the Dock, the Launchpad, or the Applications folder, then do one of the following:

   • Choose File > New (from the File menu at the top of your screen).

   • Click the New Document button at the bottom of the Open dialog.

   The template chooser opens.

   

2. In the template chooser, scroll the templates to find the type of document or envelope you want to create, then double-click the template to open it.

   To start with a blank page, choose one of the Blank templates. If you choose a template with placeholder text and graphics, you’ll replace that content with your own.

3. Do one of the following:

   • For a blank template: Begin typing. The blinking insertion point is already in position and ready to go.

   • For a template with placeholder text and images:

     • Click placeholder text, then type your own.

       Some placeholder text is written in scrambled Latin words. The text you type will appear in the language you use for your computer.

     • Click in the lower-right corner of a placeholder image to replace it with your own, or drag an image from your Mac or a webpage to a placeholder image.

     

     Tip: To undo your recent changes, choose Edit > Undo or Edit > Redo (from the Edit menu at the top of your screen).

4. Choose File > Save, enter a name, choose a location, then click Save.

   If you don’t want to keep a document you started, click Delete in the Save dialog.

   If iCloud is set up on your Mac, that's where Pages saves your documents by default.

5. When you’re finished, click the red close button in the top-left corner of the document to close it.

You can change the name of the document or change where it's saved at any time.

If you want to create a copy of your document in a format other than Pages, you can export a Pages document to another format, such as Word, PDF, or ePub.

Pages has templates for two types of documents:

• Word-processing documents are intended to include mainly text, like a report or letter. They have a body text area where you type your text (you can also add shapes, images, and other objects). Text flows from one page to the next, and you can divide the document into sections that use different formatting.

• Page layout documents are like a blank canvas on which can you add text boxes, graphics, and other elements, and arrange them however you want. They don’t have a body text area—all text is in text boxes that you can move around and layer with shapes, images, and other objects. Each page can be formatted differently from other pages. You can add and delete pages wherever you like without affecting any other page.

• To see what type of template you chose, click in the toolbar, then see if the first item in the menu is Add Page (it’s a page layout document) or Page Break (it’s a word-processing document).

After you choose a template and begin creating your document, you can’t switch to a different template. You can, however, convert the document from word processing to page layout, and vice versa. See Convert a word-processing or page layout document for instructions.

You can set a preference in Pages to always open a new document in a particular template instead of from the template chooser.

1. Choose Pages > Preferences (from the Pages menu at the top of your screen).

2. Click General at the top of the preferences window, then select “Use template.”

3. Do one of the following:

   • Use the currently selected template: Verify that the name of the template you want to use appears after “Use template.”

   • Choose a different template: Click the Change Template button, click a template, then click Choose.

4. Close the preferences window.

You can still open a new document with a different template. Hold down the Option key, then choose File > New from Template Chooser (from the File menu at the top of your screen).