Resizing the page number box in Mac Pages

Question

Level 1

11 points

Resizing the page number box in Mac Pages

I am working on a Pages document on my Mac.

For some reason the box at the bottom of the page where the page number goes, which is usually not very high, just slightly higher than the numbers, is a much higher box. It is therefore cutting off about a quarter of the page when I am writing, thus leaving quite a large gap at the bottom of the page above the number.

I am unable to find any way of lowering the height of this box so that the top of it is just above the numbers as usual. I have tried right clicking which intuitively should lead one to something which enables you to resize the box but there is nothing there. Changing headers and footers makes no difference to the box that the page number goes in.

I would be grateful for any assistance. Thank you.

Mac mini

Posted on Jul 9, 2025 04:24 AM

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Answer 1

Camelot

Level 9

57,861 points

Jul 9, 2025 09:24 AM in response to BillyBobGoat

Had to tell now since you've found a solution/workaround, but it sounds to me like the footer just had some extra blank lines in it.

The footer box (which includes the page number) will expand to incorporate all the text. If you inadvertently clicked in the box and added some blank lines, it would reflect that. Here you can see I've added some blank lines to the footer, and this sounds like what you're describing.

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Answer 2

VikingOSX

Level 10

122,052 points

Jul 9, 2025 05:25 AM in response to BillyBobGoat

Pages does not provide a means of altering the actual header or footer height — unless you choose to double-click the page number and change its font size (e.g. 21 pt). I would advise against that.

You can alter the footer distance from the bottom of the body text whether through changing the footer value, or document bottom margin on the Documents panel. You shouldn't need to do this either.

To get a better visual of this effect, toggle View menu > Show Layout.

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Answer 3

BillyBobGoat Author

Level 1

11 points

Jul 9, 2025 07:18 AM in response to VikingOSX

Thank you very much for your reply Viking.

What I cannot understand is that normally the number box has a very low height with the top of the box being just above the numbers. However, for some reason with this document that I'm working on the number box is very high. I have never encountered this before, and I do not know why it has happened.

I feel that there must be some way to adjust the box to make it a low box at the bottom of the page as is usually the case.

I appear to be locked into some kind of template which I didn't want.

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Answer 4

BillyBobGoat Author

Level 1

11 points

Jul 9, 2025 08:05 AM in response to BillyBobGoat

I have managed to solve the problem.

I did this by selecting all the text and pictures in my pages document and copying it into a new basic pages document. This one has behaved well and has the normal low rise number box at the bottom of the page.

I will discard the rogue Bigfoot document and hope I don't experience the same problem again.

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Answer 5

BillyBobGoat Author

Level 1

11 points

Jul 9, 2025 10:12 AM in response to Camelot

Thank you very much Camelot

That is exactly how it looked!

I think I must have been leaning on the keyboard without realising what I was creating.

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