How can I get full-bleed header in Pages app?

Question

How can I get full-bleed header in Pages app?

I am trying to do something very specific.

I have at the top of some pages a full-bleed black bar area (about 1.12" from the top edge) that will contain header text. There is a table of contents populates from header and section styles I have defined.

The only way I have found to achieve this full-bleed top area is to use a shape that wraps all other text below and put my header in the shape. What I have found is that text within the shape set to my header style does not populate in the table of contents.

There must be another way to achieve what I'm after. Another option is to have no text wrapping on the shape, but have the header hiding behind it (which is a hack and not a layout solution).

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Original Title: Headers that are in shapes (Pages)

Posted on Aug 8, 2025 04:02 PM

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Answer 1

VikingOSX

Level 10

122,052 points

Aug 8, 2025 04:59 PM in response to SideswipeZulu

Pages table of contents is based on active paragraph styles in the body text. Though you can apply a paragraph style in the header sections, they will be ignored in the ToC.

Tested: Pages v14.4, Sequoia v15.6.

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Answer 2

Aug 9, 2025 05:19 PM in response to VikingOSX

I saw you updated the title, but this is not what I'm attempting.

I'm not using the header area that's a part of the page layout. When I said "header" I meant the style for the table of contents.

I'm entering text in a black rectangle shape set to the header style to achieve the affect I want. As you say the table of contents will only populate based upon body content, is there a way to have the shape be counted as body content so that the header text will populate?

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Answer 3

VikingOSX

Level 10

122,052 points

Aug 10, 2025 01:14 AM in response to SideswipeZulu

SideswipeZulu wrote:

I saw you updated the title, but this is not what I'm attempting.

Not by me. The Apple hosts for these communities did that.

I'm not using the header area that's a part of the page layout. When I said "header" I meant the style for the table of contents.

I'm entering text in a black rectangle shape set to the header style to achieve the affect I want. As you say the table of contents will only populate based upon body content, is there a way to have the shape be counted as body content so that the header text will populate?

There are no Apple employees who participate in these public community discussions. We are fellow users of Pages. Microsoft Word features a more customizable table of contents than Apple has designed for Pages.

The Pages application is designed, as I stated, to capture paragraph styles from body text only. Only the Pages product team can change that behavior in the application design to include other Pages objects. You can send them direct feedback as a feature request from the application menu.

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