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A
Anonymous
August 13, 2009
Question

How do I delete a blank page? [Locked]

  • August 13, 2009
  • 4 replies
  • 5363 views

The unfriendliness of Framemaker is evidenced by this simple question.  It's a very simple thing but apparently this takes expert knowledge.  Somehow I ended up with and blank page in my Framemaker 9 document and I want to delete it.  I have tried right-clicking on the blank page.  I have tried Format menu: page layout: pagination... delete empty pages before saving and printing.  No luck.  Maybe I'm missing something obvious.  Can anybody help?

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    4 replies

    Susan305351693t3o
    Susan305351693t3o
    Inspiring
    January 24, 2024

    I'm glad I'm not the only one having this problem. But I have yet to resolve it!. FrameMaker is the buggiest program I've ever worked with. And that's saying something, because I'm a lifelong Word user. I wish it weren't the go-to for technical writing. It wastes so much time!

     

    Barb Binder
    Barb Binder
    Community Expert
    January 25, 2024

    Hi Susan:

     

    As I say to all of my intro students, FrameMaker isn't hard to use, but it's not intuitive. You need to invest time to learn FrameMaker and then of course, stop by here to ask us any questions when you get stuck. 

     

    I'm hopeful that the answers you received on your other post have helped you solve this issue. If not, please let us know how far you got, and we can pick up from there. In 2024, this forum is monitored by a small group of expert users who are always happy to answer your FrameMaker questions. 

     

    https://community.adobe.com/t5/framemaker-discussions/how-do-i-delete-blank-pages-in-framemaker/td-p/14377278

     

    ~Barb

    ~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training
    A
    Anonymous
    August 13, 2009

    Clarification: I am not concerned about blank pages at the beginning or end of a document.  I have a blank page somewhere in the middle that has no business being there.  This is an extremely simple problem for most software.  Keep the suggestions coming!  Thanks.

    1
    126Remy126
    New Participant
    August 13, 2009

    Paul, I'm certainly not as experienced as the community experts, but have you looked at your master pages? You can't delete the Left or Right master page, but I've deleted master pages (for example a First Page) master page. As long as the master page has not been applied to any of the pages in your file. It might be worth a try.

    A
    Anonymous
    August 13, 2009

    I'm pretty sure that all my other pages are controlled by the master.  So I definitely do not want to delete any master pages.

    A
    Art_Campbell1
    Inspiring
    August 13, 2009

    If you're working in a single stand-alone document, you may have the pagination set to two-sided, which would mean that you will always have an even number of pages, and may end up with a blank that can't (shouldn't) be deleted.

    It's also possible that you have content on the page that you can't see if you have Text Objects turned off in your Preferences or you're hiding conditional text modes.

    If you're working on a document that's part of a book, the pagination properties of the file after the one you're working on come into play. Book properties always trump component file properties. So if the next file is set to start on a (for instance) right hand page and your problem file ends on a right, a blank left must be inserted so that the pagination of the following file is correct. To dump the blank page in this case, you need to reset the pagination properties of all affected files in the book.

    A
    Anonymous
    August 13, 2009

    Thanks Art,

    Yes, this is part of a book and the pagination is set to double-sided.  I do not object to having a blank page at the beginning or end of the chapter that this file represents.  But I have a blank page with content before and after.  I just want my content to go directly from one page to the next.  If this were a friendly program I could just delete an errant page break somewhere.  Any more ideas?

    A
    Art_Campbell1
    Inspiring
    August 13, 2009

    With this additional info, I guess that someone manually (i.e. an unfriendly act) added a page that's outside the friendly automatic flow maintained by the program. Depending on your level of skill, you can either try to debug the problem, or try to fix things without finding out what caused the problem -- what I'd do if I were you.

    Make a backup copy of the file. Then select all the content after the blank page. Cut it, go to the last passage of text before the blank page and paste the content back in. If no new pages are automatically generated, or if they're generated after the blank page, someone manually modified the file or it became corrupted somehow -- importing Word content directly often does this because it contains lots of hidden characters.

    You can try a quick fix by doing a SaveAs a MIF file, Frame's ASCII file format. Then open that file and see if you can delete the offending page. If you can, you're done.

    If there's no change,  I  suggest that you create a new blank chapter by making a copy of one of the other chapter files in the book, deleting all the content, and pasting in the content from your problem file in two operations -- the before-the-page section and the after-the-page section.

    If that works, SaveAs over your existing file (because you already have backup copies of it, and update your book.

    Art

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