How do I hide the right document/section sidebar?

Question

I just opened Pages 5.2 for the first time to edit a big text document, and it opened to a blank page with a big side panel or sidebar the height of the right side of the document window. It has two tabs, one labeled Document and the other labeled Section, and is 2 3/4 inches wide, a huge amount of real estate on my 21 inch iMac's screen. No resizing arrows appear when I hover over the separator between the document and the panel, and the width stays the same if I resize the document window.
I've figured out how to view or hide other screen elements, but that devilish side panel won't go away. Please tell me there's a way to get rid of it!
Also, can someone recommend a user guide for the new Pages app? I'm not fond of Apple's online guide. Pages 5.2 seems better than the old Pages app, and if it's good enough I'll switch from NeoOffice, which has tons of features I don't need but isn't as user friendly for regular daily use as apps like Word or WordPerfect.
Any suggestions would be appreciated!
Thanks in advance...

Answer 1

Interesting that you think the Menu looks more "what you expect from a word processor", when the Menus are almost exactly like Pages '09 just missing stuff.
I think the orderly menus and Inspectors are what I like best about Pages '09. They work from left to right, top to bottom from big features down to small details. Wish everyone did that.
The Inspectors in Pages '09 can be freely moved, hidden/shown at a keystroke or individual tabs separated. Compared with the huge wasteful forced placement of Pages 5 and almost impossible to work with if not open.
Apple has fixed about 9 features in Pages 5.2 but since we started the list we probably have found just as many other omissions and major bugs.
So Pages 5.2 still is short about 100 features and has serious bugs with output, along with a strong probability that your files will ultimately develop serious problems. maybe not even be openable.
Pages 5 has a huge list of missing features many really essential and a long list of bugs, with the chance of losing your work always just around the corner:
http://www.freeforum101.com/iworktipsntrick/viewtopic.php?t=424&mforum=iworktips ntrick
As far as using it for real work, I'd still say it is unusable for several reasons:
1. No facing pages
2. Lists are just about unmanageable
3. The T.O.C.s promise improvements by making Section T.O.C.s but there are no retainable T.O.C. styles and the T.O.C.s seem to break
4. Even moderate amounts of objects bring it to a crawl
5. Multi page Tables won't show content after several pages
6. Objects and special formatting in tables can vanish when outputting to pdf
7. Long lists of Styles lose styles in the list
8. Still can't select non-contiguous text
9. No bookmarks
10. Very slow operation and work procedures
11. Things get hairy with long documents
12. eMailing or FTPing documents with 3rd party software can break them
13. Failed documents are impossible to parse
There are too many other short falls to list here
On the plus side only 4 things stand out for me:
1. Much better drawing tools
2. Quick layout breaks by simply selecting text and nominating the number of columns. Unfortunately these have on spacimg options before, after or to the sides
3. Quick editing of templates in the Template Chooser
4. Collaboration between multiple users
Still unworkable for me. Particularly disturbing is the hairy iCloud integration, and the dangerously obscure and incompatible file format.
I am still looking for a replacement, LibreOffice has many of the features, plus others but has a rough UI. So for now I am sticking with Pages '09 which works as it always has until Apple finally makes it unusable.
Hope that helps,
Peter