Tag Archives: Pages

Pages can now create ePub files

Posted on by

Apple released an update to iWork this week that, among other things, adds the ability to export ePub documents to Pages. This is the fifth file format that Pages can export alongside PDF, Microsoft Word, RTF, and Plain Text. But, what this really means is that normal humans finally have a way to create e-books for their favorite e-reader.

Alongside this update to Pages, Apple has also published a support document that provides some guidelines for when you should use ePub and when you should use PDF. Simply put, if the layout is more important than the text use PDF, otherwise ePub is ideal. Fortunately, iBooks for the iPad and other iOS devices can display both ePub and PDF documents.

In their support document, Apple also provides an “ePub Best Practices” Pages document that you can use as a template for any new e-books that you want to create. They also provide instructions for importing the styles from the template into an existing document to provide the structure needed by e-book readers to for the table of contents and navigation.

You can use the first page as the cover, but it looks odd.

Actually exporting the ePub file is easy enough. Simply select the Export option from the Share menu and you’ll be presented with a sheet where you can select ePub as the format. You’ll then be asked for some basic meta-data about the document. Once you’ve entered the Title and Author, you can press the Next button to choose a location to export to. And, that’s it. Just drag the file onto the iTunes icon in your dock and sync it to your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. You’re done.

I used Apple’s template to convert the original “Ease into the switch” article into an ePub book. Download it to see what kind of results you can get from just a few minutes of reformatting.

One question remains; when does this come to the iPad version of Pages?

Apple Numbers ’09

Posted on by

Apple today released an improved version of Numbers along with the rest of the iWork ’09 office suite.

They’ve taken this opportunity to really enhance their support for calculations in the spreadsheet. Numbers ’09 now includes over 250 functions each with built-in help and support for visual placeholders for each variable of the formula – instead of the old A1:D12 format you may be used to from Excel. To assist with this, Numbers also has a Formula List view for all of the calculations in your spreadsheet. And you can search this list by formula, function, or cell reference.

Charts are another area that Apple focused on improving this year. They’ve put considerable work into improving the different ways you might want to chart your data. In addition, they’ve also added the ability to link your charts from Numbers to either Pages or Keynote. And, you can change the chart styles, textures, colors, and fonts in your Pages document or Keynote presentation and they’ll stay linked to the original data in Numbers.

You can try out Numbers by downloading the free iWork ’09 trial.

Apple Pages ’09

Posted on by

Apple updated Pages during Macworld 2009 as part of an update to their iWork suite that also included updates to Keynote and Numbers.

The key new feature in Pages is the ability to write in a full screen mode that gets rid of all of the distractions of other windows. Even menu bars and tool bars are hidden until you need them. And full screen mode will also let you work with two pages side-by-side.

Also added is an outlining mode that allows you to drag & drop to rearrange your thoughts. Images and movies will appear in the outline either as thumbnails or actual size.

The ability to do mail merging with Numbers and Address Book was added. Also new is support for EndNote X2 and MathType for people with serious words that need processing.

There is a free 30-day trial of the iWork ’09 office suite.