Direct from the obscure-but-useful-tips department: A really easy, quick way to duplicate a page is to hold down the option key (Mac) or alt key (Windows) while dragging the page icon in the Pages panel. However, there is a bit of subtlety to this that you should be aware of. If you option/alt-drag a page to the right of another page icon, you’ll see a vertical bar indicating that the duplicate will be inserted at that position. Note that the hand icon doesn’t feature a “plus” sign in this case to indicate the page is being duplicated, so it looks like the page is being moved. But as long as you hold down the option/alt key, the page will indeed be duplicated.
Even though there is no “plus” sign on the hand icon, page 1 will be duplicated between pages 5 and 6 when the mouse is released.
If you option/alt-drag a page after the last page of the document, you will see a hand cursor with a plus, and no vertical bar, indicating that the page will be inserted at the end of the document.
In this example, page 1 will be duplicated at the end of the document when the mouse is released.
Here is where you need to be careful. If you option/alt-drag a page in the vertical zone between two rows of pages, or too far to the right of a row of page icons, the page will be duplicated at the end of the document.
In this example, page 1 will be duplicated at the end of the document when the mouse is released.
So if you want to duplicate a page at a specific location in your document, be sure to option/alt-drag the page and move the mouse around until the vertical bar is displayed in the location where you want the new page to be.
This article was last modified on December 30, 2021
This article was first published on June 3, 2014
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