Adding footers with page numbers without affecting the text?

[Notawiz]

Hi!

I just edited a very long Pages document to the perfection. It's perfect in every way, the text on every page cuts nicely and continues on the next page. The paragraphs, the sentences and all the other things, they are just the way they should be. It was a day's work, but now it's done.

Except I forgot to put in page numbers. Stupid me.

In the Inspector, the "Footer" box is currently unchecked. If I check it, all the text will go haywire. All my beautiful cuts are totally destroyed.

Is there a way to add the page numbers without otherwise affecting the document? I mean, there is plenty of room in the bottom of every page — the bottom margin is 2 centimetres. But since the page numbers can only be inserted into the footers, I'm guessing I need to turn the footers on. And that messes up everything.

I tried to change the bottom margin value to 0 cm and then add a footer of 2 cm. But all the pages were still a mess. So I'd say the height of the footer and the height of the bottom margin are measured somehow differently, then?

Is my only option to go through the whole document again? Put in the page numbers and then start from the beginning?

 

[Spacetime Anomaly]

If there is plenty of room for the footer, I can't see how it would effect the body text.

Maybe leave the bottom margin as it is (2cm), but turn down the footer bottom setting instead (it's underneath the footer checkbox). The text should then flow as normal.

 

[Notawiz]

If there is plenty of room for the footer, I can't see how it would effect the body text.

Maybe leave the bottom margin as it is (2cm), but turn down the footer bottom setting instead (it's underneath the footer checkbox). The text should then flow as normal.

Thanks for answering!

I guess I still just don't quite understand, how the footers/headers and margins work together...

First, when I checked the "Footers" box, it messed up the whole text - like I said. Then I lowered the footer height a little. It affected the text a bit less. Now I would have assumed that this would mean only one thing: if I brought the Footer height all the way down to zero, it would not affect the text at all - but the only problem would be that the page numbers would be right in the bottom, at the edge of the paper.

I tested this theory, and it seemed to be true: Footer 0 cm puts the page numbers at the edge. Which doesn't look very nice.

But then I started to raise the Footer height, little by little. Every time checking if the text would stay the same. And lo and behold, I got as far as 0,8 cm without any mess. Anything beyond that, and the lines and the paragraphs would start to change.

It would be really nice, if one could use the headers and footers totally freely - as if they were in a different layer altogether. But that doesn't seem to be the case. Or is there something else I don't understand? Probably yes.

But your suggestion helped me to find a satisfying compromise. Thank you very much!

 

[Spacetime Anomaly]

No problem.

If you go to View > Show layout, you should see a bounding box where the body text meets the footer. If the footer is below the body text then all should be fine.

In a word processing document the text is designed to flow dynamically from page to page (for novel or essay writing, etc). If you want to precisely control how each page looks you should use text boxes instead of body text and perhaps choose a Page Layout (which is for flyers, brochures, etc).

Good luck.