Cannot permanently delete additional blank pages

[Rina J]

I have a four-page chapter in a book I'm working on. This book applies to seven different products, so I have conditional text for each of those. There are quite a few product-specific tables in the manual, so if you are viewing the conditional text for all products at once, my little 4-page chapter becomes a 22-page chapter.

Everything was worked fine until today, when I had to create a new "NarrowMargin" master page to accomodate a 16-column table that needs to be there for five of the products. I specified that page 4 of the body pages should use the NarrowMargin master page.

Page 4 looks good. However, if I'm viewing the document for only one product (i.e., I've hidden the conditional text for all other products), I now I have 18 blank pages following page 4. I can delete those pages easily enough (Format > Document > Delete Pages) but they come back as soon as I switch to view the conditional text for a different product.

I hope that makes sense. I suppose I don't mind deleting the pages each time, but I'm concerned that I'll forget (or that they'll come back on their own) when it's time to publish.

I'm in FrameMaker 15 using Windows 10.

Thanks in advance for your help! 

[Bob_Niland]

Use Master Page Mapping to do this. The page layout(s) unneeded in specific Conditional views will vanish after running an AMP (Apply Master Pages).

[Winfried Reng]

Hi ennar,

I am not sure, if I understand you correctly.

You change the conditions which should be shown, and then empty pages appear. And these empty pages were not populated before? Before the change 4 pages with content and after the change again 4 pages with content, but additionally 18 empty pages?

Do these empty pages have the regular master page or the NarrowMargin master page?

This should not happen.

Can you create a bug report in the Adobe Tracker? Also upload your file so that Adobe can reproduce your issue.

When you post the bug number here, others can vote for it.

Bob suggested to use the Master Page Mapping feature to control the master pages. That's certainly a good idea.

FrameMaker can delete empty pages when saving. You can set this in Format | Page Layout | Pagination. However, only pages with the regular right/left master pages get deleted. Not custom master pages.

Best regards

Winfried

[Rina J]

Hi! I finally figured out how to squeeze everything into the Right master page so I didn't have to use NarrowMargin.

If I had it set to view all conditional text, the document was 22 pages. If I set it to view for just one of my conditions, it only needed 4 pages but kept the additional 18 as blank pages. Generally when this happens, I can just click "Save" and the extra pages go away. This wasn't happening in this case.

Unfortunately, I have deleted the NarrowMargins master page, so I can't replicate what was happening yesterday. I'm so sorry -- I didn't think to report it as a bug, as I assumed it was probably user error. 🙂

[Lynne A. Price]

Ennar,

   One of FM's pagination properties is what to do with blank pages when you save or print a document. Delete Empty Pages is one of the options. (You can change pagination properties with Format > Page Layout > Pagination).

   The catch you've encountered is caused by the way FrameMaker assigns master pages as well as how it determines whether a page is empty. Internally, FrameMaker associates custom master pages with the page count of a body page.  In your case, a custom master page has been assigned to page 22. FrameMaker stores the master page assignment with the page and not with the content on that page that motivated the assignment. It assumes that you had some reason for assigning that master page and therefore when you save the document it retains page 22 and all preceding pages so that there will be a page 22 in the document.

   Bob's suggestion to use the Apply Master Pages with the Master Page Mappings table on the MasterPageMaps reference page bypasses the above by assigning the default master page (Right in a single-sided document, Left or Right in a double-sided document) to all pages in an unstructured document, before assigning the master pages determined by the table. Thus, if you Apply Master Pages to your document before saving it you should see the expected behavior.

   There are other situations in which determining whether a page contains visible content is not as straightforward as you might think. For example, FM does not consider a page that contains a paragraph with no content to be empty. Nor is a page with an anchored frame that doesn't contain any objects treated as an empty page.

   And in a structured document, Apply Master Pages only applies the default master page to pages within the root element, not to any following pages that might bed leftover from reducing the size of the content by hiding conditional text or deleting content.

     --Lynne

[Winfried Reng]

Hi ennar,

Did you apply your NarrowMargins master page to the last page (i.e. 22), when all conditions were shown? Then Lynne is correct. You should do this only to page 4. Pages which have a custom master page applied cannot be deleted automatically.

When you had applied your master page only to page 4, and the empty pages could not be deleted automatically, then there is another issue.

Best regards

Winfried

[Rina J]

Lynne, thanks for the explanation--it's very helpful! Yes, I think that is what happened. The large table was to be on the final page of each version of the document.

As it turned out, I didn't need a page with narrow margins. (The previous document, in Word, used them, but I found that I could just make all the columns a little narrower, and that made the table fit within standard 1-inch margins.) This is good information to know going forward, so thanks for explaining!