I am having difficulty learning Apple Pages 2025, after using Word for Mac for 20 yrs, Advice? Insights Please?

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I am having difficulty learning Apple Pages 2025, after using Word for Mac for 20 yrs, Advice? Insights Please?

Re: I’m a new user of Apple Pages (2025)...Since leaving full time work, I decided to NOT renew MS Office for Mac, to save money & since I’d only write a few times a week, I figured it'd be an easy switch.

It MAY be just me, but I’m reaching out to ask others if you’ve tried to make this switch, and if so, have you had difficulty adjusting? I do NOT need/use fancy features focused on publishing or formatting or a million possible templates.

I could’ve gotten used to formatting being in the right column etc. BUT what seems just nuts & hard to adjust to and how tabs and indents are set handled, no flex apparent in pagination… and more.

So I just put my plan on hold (and didn’t order one of the Pages 25 help books)… and I am ready to just try Google Docs because it does have a simple level; but I have feared Google for many years, privacy wise.

I have found a few posts in years back comparing G Docs to Word for Mac, but none comparing Pages to Google Docs.

Input & feedback & ideas from folks who’ve been in the spot I’m in now, would be gratefully appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Howard

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 15.5

Posted on Jun 25, 2025 08:32 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Yellowbox

Level 7

21,789 points

Jun 26, 2025 03:47 AM in response to NJpsychout

Hi Howard,

NJpsychout wrote:

I do NOT need/use fancy features focused on publishing or formatting or a million possible templates.

I suggest that you look at the built in templates in the Pages Template Chooser (Menu > File > New).

You won't find a million templates; you will find some templates carefully crafted by Apple professionals. Those templates illustrate the power and charm of Pages.

Hint for new players: there are two kinds of documents in Pages. Word Processing and Page Layout. See this reply by Viking Unable to write in new Pages document on … - Apple Community

which gives a link to this Apple Support page Intro to word-processing and page layout documents in Pages on Mac - Apple Support

Happy Paging!

Ian.

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Answer 2

VikingOSX

Level 10

122,064 points

Jun 25, 2025 09:57 AM in response to NJpsychout

Apple's Pages has been around now for 20 years. The design philosophy is a simplistic word processing application that is not a clone of MS Word and that means it lacks most of Words features that you have grown accustomed too over the years. If you attempt to use Pages as though it were MS Word, you will lapse directly into madness.

If you are exchanging Word documents with other MS Word users, then you should still be using MS Word, or the free version of SoftMaker Office 2024. The idea is to not introduce document translation (e.g. Pages), but to retain native Word documents.

The challenge of third-party books about Pages is that they are outdated and can lead you astray in contrast to the online manuals that Apple provides at the Pages Official Apple Support link provided above. As Pages and its documents are only compatible with Pages on Apple's platforms, contrasting it with Google Docs or MS Word would be lost time for anyone with that ambition.

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Answer 3

Kurt Lang

Level 9

67,536 points

Jun 25, 2025 08:50 AM in response to NJpsychout

Pages (and Apple's other Office replacements, Numbers and Keynote) are far too simplistic. You'd be much better off with the free LibreOffice, or the also free OnlyOffice. Both have much more familiar interfaces.

Another choice is the free version of SoftMaker Office. This is probably the closest lookalike and workalike to Office out there. The free version has ads and no spell check. I use the paid version (usually offered at a very low price in one the ads you'll see while using the apps). They really push the more expensive NX version, but most people don't need that. The standard version is plenty sufficient for most users. The standard version is initially more expensive because it's a perpetual license. NX is subscription only.

None of the above offer an Outlook workalike. Word, PowerPoint and Excel, only. As a replacement for Outlook, I use the free version of eM Client.

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Answer 4

Jun 25, 2025 08:41 AM in response to NJpsychout

Have you looked at the resources here:

Pages - Official Apple Support

The Help menu is also very useful. I just opened Pages and typed "Indent" into the Help menu. It immediately gave me some very useful instructions:

Personally, my method of learning technology is to push every button (or menu item or whatever) and see what happens so I may not be the best person to tell you how to make the adjustment.

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