Conditional text leaves large paragraph spaces in pdf

[lynf74610435]

Hi all!

I am a newbie to this support community so I hope that I am posting in the right place.

My problem is that I have two very similar guides that I used conditional tags to hide some of the information that is not relevant to one of the guides. When I create a pdf of that guide there are large spaces between paragraphs. The "first" guide I created has all the text in is perfect. It is the second guide that only has some of the text where there seems to be a formatting problem. 

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Lyn

[LinSims]

Without looking at it, my first guess is that you didn't include the ending paragraph marker when you applied the condition.

Turn on both condition indicators and text symbols and take a look at the problem areas. Triple-click on a paragraph that is not appearing in the document but that is leaving a gap behind. You want to make sure this symbol is included in the selection: ¶

Check the Conditions panel for that condition. If it's shaded but not checked, then the condition tag wasn't applied to the entire paragraph including the ¶. Click the selection box twice to clear it and then select it, then apply again. Hide the condition to see if it took this time. 🙂

[Barb Binder]

If that isn't the answer—and I suspect it is—please share a screen shot with text symbols visible, all condition tags visible for a section with the issue and with condition indicators enabled. 

~Barb  

[lynf74610435]

Thank you LinSims for your quick reply. Just to be clear all my conditional paragraphs are working fine in both documents. The original document was not created by me so I am adding to it.  The problem is the document is made up of boxes where the previous writer entered in the text within those boxes. A "box" may take up half a page and then the next "box" needs half a page also but cannot fit so that box is moved to the next page creating a gap of 1/2 a blank page. I fixed all these "blanks" in the first document, but now when I run to get my "second" conditional output the fixes are not necessarily the same so I would need to do manual fixing on each of my chapters for each of the two books I created. Is there a better way I could be doing this as it is very time-consuming?

Thanks,

Lyn

[Barb Binder]

Hi @lynf74610435 :

By "boxes" do you mean anchored frames? You might want to experiment setting the frames to "float" so that the text that follows them will backfill and not leave a large gap.

https://www.rockymountaintraining.com/adobe-framemaker-how-to-float-tables-anchored-frames/

In FrameMaker, the goal is always to avoid manual formatting and overrides—which may be a quick fix, but will cause reflow issues down the road, just as you are describing. 

~Barb 

[LinSims]

@lynf74610435, are you saying that the previous writer set the document up as a series of text boxes? Text is only in the boxes, not outside of them?

[lynf74610435]

Hi LimSims, 

Yes I think they may be anchored box and then he inserted text into those boxes> I am going to check as that is what Barb suggested and see if that works. (changing to floating frames).

thanks!!!

lyn

[lynf74610435]

Hi Barb,

I think that they may be achored frames but I have not checked. That will be my next step and then try to ceange them to floating frame. I cannot design these documents and start over with a new page format and then try todo the documents as there is not enought time. 

Thank you so much for your response.  I will let you know it that works. 🙂