Creating Advanced Templates in iWork Pages

This article introduces you to building advanced templates for your notes, briefs and outlines using Pages, which is part of Apple’s iWork application suite. First, you might be wondering: what makes a template advanced, and why such a template is beneficial? An advanced Pages template, by my definition, benefits from:

• Pre-defined ’sections’ as a quick and easy way to add pre-built structure to your notes
• The use of ‘placeholder text’ for quick and easy text modification
• The use of pre-defined ’styles’ to increase consistency and decrease the amount of time needed to selectively style your documents
• Useful Pages functionality like automatic ‘Table of Contents’ generation

Begin by loading Pages and selecting ‘Blank’ at the template selection screen.

Next, we’ll remove the default ’sections’ that come with the ‘Blank’ Pages template. We’re starting with a totally clean slate. From the menu bar, select

Format > Advanced > Manage Pages


Remove the bundled pages by using the ‘Delete’ button. Press ‘Done’ when you’re finished.

First, we’ll create a cover page. Make sure your ‘Styles Drawer’ is visible by clicking on the ‘View’ button and selecting ‘Show Styles Drawer’. This should display a one- (or three-) paned window with a number of built-in styles. We’ll use and modify these as we go along.

Using a built-in style is straightforward, and can be done either by first selecting the desired style and then typing, or by applying it to selected text. I’m going to build a simple layout shown here:

For my taste, the default font sizes in Pages tend to be a little larger than I’d like. Therefore, I manually decrease the font size by hitting ‘Command’ + – (that is, the Command key_ and the hyphen, (or minus) key, or by using the ‘Fonts’ property box which can be pulled up by pressing the Fonts button in the top-right-hand-corner of the Pages window.

Once you’ve modified the fonts to your desired size / font, make sure to save your new paragraph styles. If you’ve changed them from the default, a small, red downward arrow should appear next to the paragraph style in the ‘Styles Drawer’ when that kind of paragraph is selected.

Simply right click on this paragraph style and select ‘Redefine Style From Selection’. Now whenever you apply this particular paragraph style to a selection of text, the adjusted font settings will be applied. Go through your document and reset all of the font styles to your desired size. Doing so will ensure that you produce a consistent, legible document in the future without having to constantly modify your font settings.

Next, we’ll add a table of contents. This may seem futile since we have no content yet, but that’s part of the genius of the built-in ‘Table of Contents’ functionality in Pages – it automatically updates without any additional care. First, on your cover page, select an appropriate location where you’d like the table of contents to appear. Next, choose:

Insert > Table of Contents


You should get a pseudo-error message which informs you that the document is empty. This is normal, so we won’t worry about it for now. Next, insert a ‘Section Break’ by selecting:

Insert > Section Break
This will give us a new page, and allow us to begin building individual section templates for our work.

Now we’re ready to add content, so let’s build a template for adding case briefs to our document. I’ll generate one with a very basic structure: first, the name and year of the case. Next, sections for Facts, Issue, Reasoning, Holding, and any Notes or Comments. Adjust what you see to your own preference for briefing cases. Below is how mine came out:

I urge you to re-create one of your own briefs with as much information as you generally include. This will yield a better template and reduce the amount of tweaking that you need to do later on. Now that you have a completely filled-out case brief in front of you, it’s time to turn it into a quick and usable template. Individually select every body of text that might change, such as both of the names of the parties involved, the date, the text within the ‘Facts’ section, the text within the ‘Issue’ section, and so on. Each time you select an individual portion of text, click on:

Format > Advanced > Define as Placeholder Text


This simply means that next time you go to click on that portion of text, rather than placing your cursor at the precise point where you clicked, the entire portion of text that you defined as placeholder will be selected. In other words, rather than carefully selecting the text that you’d want to remove from your template to fill with actual content, you can quickly, and with less need for precision, click the larger block of text. If you used rough templates in the past without doing this, you’ll be amazed by how much time it saves. What’s more, Pages remembers what kind of Paragraph Style you used for each portion of Placeholder Text. So, for instance, under my ‘Reasoning’ section I use bullets rather than paragraphs. Pages will remember this when I replace the placeholder text, keeping the list style in place.

When you’re done defining each piece of Placeholder text, it’s time to turn this individual page into a re-usable section that is quickly and easily added to your document. (In the past, had you not used this functionality, you might have gone back and copied-and-pasted an old case, and selectively edited each piece to fit your new information). Doing it this way will save you both time and effort. First, insert a section break at the end of the page:

Insert > Section Break
Now select the entire case brief page. Next, choose:

Format > Advanced > Capture Pages
Name it appropriately and click ‘OK’.

So what just happened? If you click on the ‘Sections’ button near the top-left-corner of the Pages window, you’ll notice that you have a new kind of section – a case brief. If you add one, you’ll see that your document now has a new sheet, complete with all of the placeholder text. In other words, it’s now extremely easy for you to add pre-formatted pages to your document.

I suggest going through the preceding steps and creating pages for anything else you might add, such as class notes (where placeholder text might be the date of the class, the subject, etc.) and so on.

Before you close out your file, scroll back up to the top and look at your table of contents. (Note: you may have to click on the table of contents once to get it to update).

You should see all kinds of new information. If you’ve used styles throughout, especially if you’ve made use of sub-headings, you might find that the default text size and layout will become prohibitively lengthy. Luckily, Pages gives you built-in functionality to fine-tune the appearance of your table of contents. Having clicked on your Tables of Contents, click on the Inspector button if the window not already open.

Using the navigational tabs, based on the following screenshot, fine-tune the TOC output such that it meets your needs:

Great! You now have a working table of contents

At this stage, you might want to add some final touches, such as:

• Adding page numbers (Insert > Page Number) to the document’s footer
• Adding your name to the document’s header
• Building a different section type for each kind of entry you might make to this document

Once you’ve finalized your work and you’re confident that you’re done, export what you’ve made as a template by selecting:

File > Save as Template
From now on, the file is available from the ‘My Templates’ section of the Template Chooser.