I am trying to delete several pages out of my Pages document. When I highlight that one page in the thumbnails and click delete, it wants to delete every page in the document. Please help!

While Chris's suggestions will clear up many issues with the software, I doubt that it will help here. If your Pages document is a Word Processing document, Pages is doing what it is designed to do.

A word processing document starts out with a single Section, containing a single page. As you add text, the text fills the page. When the text fills the page entirely, Pages automatically adds a new page to the section to accommodate the 'extra text.

If you remove text from anywhere in the word processing document, the remaining text below that removed is moved up to close the space. If the end of the text moves up into the second last page, the last page, no longer needed to hold the text, disappears.

You can force Pages to create a new page at any point by inserting a Page break (Insert menu > Page break)

Suppose you have done only the type of activities described above, and now have a ten page document, all pages of which are in the same Section.

And there's the rub.

When you try to select a page in the thumbnails, you'll see the yellow Section boundary encloses not just one page, but all ten pages of the document, or more precisely, all ten pages of the Section.

The smallest unit you can select in the thumbnails is a Section. If you then press delete, the selected Section is what gets deleted.

To remove a Page, or part of a page, you have two routes you can follow:

1. Select and delete the Contents of the page you want to remove. Pages will automatically move the text after the deleted text up to fill the empty space, and if that empties the last page of text, will delete that now empty page.
   1. If you have Objects (eg. images) on that page, you may need to select and delete them separately from deleting the text.
2. OR isolate the page(s) you want to delete in a separate Section, then select that Section from the thumbnails, and delete the Section.
   1. Place the insertion point at the end of the text on the last page before the page(s) you want to delete.Go to the Insert menu and choose Section Break.
   2. Place the insertion point at the end of the text on the last page you want to delete, Go to the Insert menu and again choose Section Break.
   3. In the thumbnails click to select one of the pages you want to delete. Check that the yellow Section boundary encloses only the thumbnails of the pages you want to delete, then press Delete.

Pages produces two types of document.

Word processing documents work as described above. The main content is text, and it is placed in the Document Body, where it freely flows from one page to another.

Page Layout documents differ from Word Processing Documents in not having a Document Body. All text in a Page Layout document is in containers, usually Text Boxes, but also in other objects, such as Shapes. Because there is no Body text to force new Pages in a Page Layout document, each page is a separate Section, Each Section may be selected individually in the thumbnails, and each section may be moved within the document, or removed from the document individually.

Regards,

Barry

Hello jmcsnnhelp.

Thanks for reaching out to Apple Support Communities. I see that you are having some trouble with deleting pages of a Pages document. I will be glad to assist.

I would suggest saving your Pages documents, then quit the app, reopen and retry. If the problem persists, start up in safe mode to see if works:

How to use safe mode on your Mac

Hope this helps.

Cheers.