I'm trying to figure out what the command keystoke combination is supposed to be, to insert a page break in Pages. In the menu, it shows the key as being what looks like a caret (shift-6) with a bar on top. It's somewhat reminiscent of the disk eject function key on my old Mac, except that one had the bar underneath. So, I have no idea what key I'm supposed to press to insert a page break, and doing it via the menu is cumbersome when I'm paginating a 200 page document.

If anyone can tell me what key to use, I would be forever grateful.

This Apple doc shows "Insert page break   =   Command-Enter"

All of the commonly used symbols such as ⌘ ⏎ ⌥ are shown in the Yosemite and El Capitan emojis and the appropriate keystroke is identified if you hover the pointer of the symbol. The ⌅ symbol shown in the Pages menu is identified as the Projective symbol. Searching for the projective symbol on Google led me to an Ask Different article identifying that as the enter key on full size Apple keyboards. That matched Artie's suggestion of ⌘⏎.

Since I had gone this far and even though I seldom use Pages, I decided to verify the answer. But on my Mac mini with an Apple Magic keyboard running OS X 10.11.4 beta 5 THAT DOES NOT WORK. Then I recalled the article specifically pointed out the ⌅ as the enter-like key to the right of the numeric keypad on the full size Apple keyboard. Then ancient memories kicked in. On the full size Apple, and other, keyboards there was a difference between the ENTER key by the numeric keypad and the RETURN key. (IIRC the enter key is an ASCII carriage return plus line feed, while the return key is simply an ASCII line feed character, or vice. versa.) With the loss of the keypad on the newer Apple keyboards the distinction has been all but lost.

It tool some trial and error but the magic keyboard combination to insert a page break in Pages is…

wait for it…

drum roll please…

fn⌘⏎ (function+command+return)

According to Pages > Help…


The insert button ¶• is on the default Pages tool bar and would be a bit more convenient than using the menu. Which of the three options is the most convenient I leave up to the reader — as I said I don't use Pages very much. If I were working on a 200 page document I would use Scrivener, Ulysses, or Mellel as they are designed to handle large and complex documents.

Not sure what you mean by "enter-like." It's an enter key, plain and simple. It's been on every Apple keyboard I've owned, and it's there on the current full-size keyboard.

Enter like was the term used in the article I referenced, I didn't make it up. I don't have one to look at but IIRC the return key at the right end of the alpha keyboard is labeled RETURN and may have a ⏎ symbol on it while the key at the lower right of the keypad is labeled ENTER and has a ⌅ symbol (at least the one pictured in the article is like that). The key on my Magic keyboard has no symbol on it but is lettered RETURN in large capital letters near the bottom of the key and enter in small somewhat faint lower case letters at the top. That was the clue to use the fn key to trigger enter and get the page break in Pages.

Even though Apple still catalogs the full size keyboard they have become a rare item and there is no individual "enter" key on Apple laptops or iOS devices. I have a Belkin wireless number pad and the lower right key is lettered enter, but it will not trigger the Pages page break.

Thanks for the info. I haven't had a fullsize keyboard for a long time. So I didn't know what what the funny symbol was.

Anyway, it appears that on my laptop keyboard, Fn-Return is equivalent to 'enter' and so the key combo cmd-Fn-Return does give me a page break.

Mystery solved.