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Is it possible to set two independent columns in Apple pages, so that the text in the left column continues in the left column of the next page and not in the right column. And the text of the right column continues in the right column of the next one.

What I'm trying to do is to have some text and its translation, side by side.

2 Answers 2

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You could accomplish this by creating a Page Layout document. On the first page, create two side-by-side Text Boxes. Before typing, duplicate the page (control-click on the page thumbnail to the left of the editing area). Then, link each text box to its corresponding text box on the next page.

enter image description here

To add additional pages, go to the last page and duplicate it, to avoid having to recreate the text boxes from scratch each time.

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  • Thanks. That would be really cumbersome with a several pages long document. Apr 1, 2012 at 20:14
  • Superb, great idea to simply cut and paste the last page. ▲
    – stuffe
    Apr 1, 2012 at 22:00
  • In Pages 7, linking text boxes is now accomplished by "threading" the boxes. Each text box now has a control circle (centre of the top line of the text box frame) as described in support.apple.com/kb/PH26558?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US). After creating the basic layout of your document as described above, click the circles of the text boxes for the first language in order, then click the second language text box and selecting "create new thread" and click the remaining text boxes to join the second thread. This "thread" process is very similar to the "linking" in the answer above. Jul 26, 2018 at 18:10
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A simple way of achieving this is to have a simple table, with 2 columns and 1 row. Set the borders to be empty/invisible/unset so that they do not show, and then put each language into their respective "side". This isn't a true column view, but the net effect should be the same and it should carry across page breaks fine.

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  • I tried that, but the table didn't span several pages. The extra content was just hidden. Apr 1, 2012 at 20:14
  • Interesting - which page style was used, layout or document style?
    – stuffe
    Apr 1, 2012 at 20:15
  • I picked word processing, blank. Apr 1, 2012 at 20:49
  • Yep, I tried it also, worked over 2 pages, refused to move into the 3rd. Odd.
    – stuffe
    Apr 1, 2012 at 20:54
  • For me no matter what I tried, it never got to the second page. Apr 1, 2012 at 20:58

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