Editing text on the page

You can use the Pointer Tool to edit frame text, table text, or artistic text directly. On the page, you can select and enter text, set paragraph indents and tab stops, change text properties, apply text styles, and use Find and Replace. For editing longer stories, and for more advanced options, choose WritePlus (Edit Story… from the Edit menu).

Selecting and entering text

The selection of frame text, artistic text, and table text follows the conventions of the most up-to-date word-processing tools. The selection area is shaded in semi-transparent blue for clear editing.

PagePlus text select2 Editing text on the page

Double-, triple- or quadruple-click selects a word, paragraph or all text, respectively. You can also make use of the Ctrl-click or drag for selection of non-adjacent words, the Shift key for ranges of text.

To select text on the page:

To select…

Action

Example

a single word

double-click

PagePlus text select2 Editing text on the page
 

multiple words

Ctrl-click or
Ctrl
-drag

PagePlus text select6 Editing text on the page

a paragraph

triple-click

PagePlus text select3 Editing text on the page
 

all text

quadruple-click

PagePlus text select7 Editing text on the page

a portion of text

drag with cursor (use Ctrl-drag for multiple portions of text). Use Shift key when clicking between two insertion points.

PagePlus text select4 Editing text on the page
 

a box column

Alt-drag

PagePlus text select5 Editing text on the page

  • You can multi-select identical words and phrases by using the Find and Replace’s Select All feature.

  • If you’ve based your publication on a design template, your text frames will be populated with placeholder text. Quadruple-click the text and begin typing your new text (formatted in Normal paragraph text style).

To edit text on the page:

  1. Select the Pointer Tool, then click (or drag) in the text object. A standard insertion point appears at the click position (see below),
    – or -
    Select a single word, paragraph or portion of text (see above).

  2. Type to insert new text or overwrite selected text, respectively.

PagePlus text select1 Editing text on the page

To start a new paragraph:

  • Press Enter.

To start a new line within the same paragraph (using a “line break” or “soft return”):

  • Press Shift+Enter.

The following two options apply only to frame text. You can use these shortcuts or choose the items from the Insert>Break submenu.

To flow text to the next column (Column Break), frame (Frame Break) or page (Page Break):

  • Press Ctrl+Enter, Alt+Enter or Ctrl+Shift+Enter, respectively.

To switch between insert mode and overwrite mode:

  • Press the Insert key.

To show special characters:

  • Click the PagePlus tbr view showspecialcharacters Editing text on the page drop-down arrow on the View toolbar, either for Show Special Characters (paragraph marks and breaks; see below) or Show Spaces (Show Special Characters plus tabs, non-breaking spaces, hyphenation points, and “filled” normal spaces).

PagePlus specialchars1 Editing text on the page

PagePlus specialchars2 Editing text on the page

Copying, pasting, and moving text

You can easily copy and paste text using standard commands; drag and drop of text is also supported.

  • If you don’t place an insertion point on pasting, the text can be pasted into a new text frame directly.

Setting paragraph indents

When a text object is selected, markers on the horizontal ruler indicate the left indent, first line indent, and right indent of the current paragraph. You can adjust the markers to set paragraph indents, or use a dialog.

PagePlus rulers4 annotate Editing text on the page

  • The Left indent (A) is set in relation to the object’s left margin.

  • The 1st line indent (B) is in relation to the left indent.

  • The Right indent (C) is in relation to the object’s right margin.

For details on setting frame margins, see Frame setup and layout.

To set the indents of the current paragraph:

  • Drag the appropriate ruler marker(s) as shown above.
    – or -

  • For quick left indents, select the PagePlus tbr contexttext increaselevel Editing text on the page Increase Level or PagePlus tbr contexttext decreaselevel Editing text on the page Decrease Level button to increase or decrease indent, respectively. Indent is by the currently set default tab stop distance.
    – or -

  • To adjust indent settings numerically, choose Paragraph… from the Format menu (or Text Format>Paragraph… from the right-click menu). In the Indentation box, you can enter values for Left, Right, 1st Line, or Hanging indents.

Setting tab stops

To set a tab stop:

  1. Select the paragraph(s) in which you want to set tab stops.

  2. Click the ruler intersection button until it changes to the type of tab you want: (Left, Center, Right, or Decimal).
     

    PagePlus rulertab left Editing text on the page

    PagePlus rulertab centre Editing text on the page

    PagePlus rulertab right Editing text on the page

    PagePlus rulertab decimal Editing text on the page

    Left

    Center

    Right

    Decimal

  3. Click on the horizontal ruler where you want to set a tab stop. You’ll see your tab stop appear.

  4. To move a tab stop, drag it to a new ruler position.

  5. To delete a tab stop, drag it off the ruler.

  • If you want to set precise measurements for tabs, right-click the frame and choose Text Format, then select Tabs… from the submenu.

Sorting text

PagePlus lets you sort words, numbers or a combination of both. The sorting mechanism is paragraph based so it’s just as easy to sort whole paragraphs as well as single letters if necessary—it’s all the same to PagePlus! Sorting can be carried out in ascending (A to Z, or 0 to 9) or descending order (Z to A, or 9 to 0) to a set priority: numbers first, then punctuation marks, letters, and symbols last.

Intelligent sorting takes place when dealing with lists comprising weekdays and months. Rather than order by first letter, the sort can be carried out by weekday or month order instead.

To sort text:

  1. Select the artistic text or text frame containing the text to be sorted. Alternatively, drag across a portion of text to create a text selection to which sorting is limited to.

  2. Select the PagePlus  Editing text on the page ploads/sub/pageplus/en/source/graphics/tbr_contexttext_sort.png" style="width:22px;height:22px" width="22" height="22" border="0" class="hcp1"> Sort button from the Text context toolbar.

  3. From the dialog, choose a Sort method. Typically, you would choose Normal but if your list contains weekdays or months, pick a date format from the Sort drop-down menu which matches your list’s date format. This will then sort on month order rather than alphabetic order.

  4. Enable either the Ascending or Descending button.

  5. Check Case Sensitive to separate out lower case characters from upper case characters (which list first).

  6. To check Treat numbers as text to order number lists as 1, 10, 12, 3, 5 instead of 1, 3, 5, 10, 12.

Working with Unicode text

PagePlus fully supports Unicode, making it possible to incorporate foreign characters or special symbols.

  • To paste Unicode text from the Clipboard to the page, use Edit>Paste Special…, then select “Unformatted Unicode Text.”

  • Insert Unicode characters directly into your text by typing your Unicode Hex value and pressing Alt+X. The Alt+X keyboard operation toggles between the displayed character (e.g., @) and its Hex value (e.g., U+0040) equivalent.

  • To export text in Unicode format, use WritePlus.

Editing text on the page