How to stop Pages from making multiple copies of the same document

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Level 1

73 points

How to stop Pages from making multiple copies of the same document

This is making me crazy. Every time I edit a document, Pages makes a copy instead of just saving what I edited. So I end up having a single document with Copy 2, Copy 3, Copy 4, etc. ad nauseam. These copies are multiplying like the brooms in The Sorcerer's Apprentice! And I can find no way to make it stop -- I need a Master Sorcerer.

I generally leave a document open but minimized in the dock if I edit it frequently (like an agenda), so the dock is now crowded with copies. I'm not using the Cloud at all and I have no docs there.

I saw a question about this answered by Apple Support like 6 years ago, and I couldn't make sense of it. All I want is to shut that process down and have Pages make and save changes without making copies.

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 11.7

Posted on Oct 12, 2024 7:09 PM

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Answer 1

Oct 13, 2024 1:19 AM in response to william98

Create a new Pages document. Manually save it and give it a different name than Untitled.pages. At this point, Pages autosave and versioning are enabled and will save any subsequent content you enter into the document without a need to manually press cmd+S to save it. Some non-Apple filesystems may not support autosave/versioning and Pages will present a dialog to that effect.

Pages will append Copy, Copy 2, … Copy n to the filename when one duplicates and manually saves an original document in the same filesystem location. I never have encountered this generation numbering of Pages documents because I never use the duplicate feature from the file menu.

More info: Pages User Guide for Mac - Apple Support

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Answer 2

Oct 13, 2024 11:22 AM in response to william98

A manual save via cmd+S should do just that and not duplicate the document. I rarely do manual saves anymore as I save the new Pages document once (manually) before I enter any content. Then, autosave works across Pages sessions on the same document. Pages is not a Word clone by any stretch of the imagination.

I also use an external drive for Time Machine backups.

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Answer 3

william98 Author

Level 1

73 points

Oct 13, 2024 11:10 AM in response to VikingOSX

You mean the problem was my manually saving each time I edited the doc? Who knew? I'm new to Pages and much of it seems similar to Word, and with Word I got in the habit of hitting Command-S. Habit in need of breaking. (I had Word 2011 for Mac, which stopped working with OS updates -- maybe Word now has autosave too? No matter -- never using Microsoft again)

Anyway, it seems to have worked -- I c&p'd the doc into a new one, saved it with a new name. Then I did a test edit without saving, closed it, reopened it, and the edit was saved.

So thank you VERY much! Now if I can just remember to not manually save...

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