What causes blank pages

[RBKearnsJr]

Hello all,

Just wondering.  I see several posts on the web talking about how to remove blank pages from a file.  I wonder, what is the cause and is there a way to prevent the creation in the first place.

thanks in advance.

Regards,

Ben

FM 2017

[Bob_Niland · Accepted solution]

The usual suspects include things like:

For trailing blank pages, it's often the pagination setting at the document level.

Within the flow, Paragraph-level excessive Keep-With settings can result in blanks (including for Row Format within tables).

Paragraph Pagination properties calling for Top of Page are popular.

Disconnected blank pages just need to be connected to the Flow or manually deleted.

[Barb Binder]

Hi RBKearnsJr:

I'll add that it can also be:

1. pagination settings at the book level,
2. reformatting and making the text smaller, or
3. editing and having less content.

In the latter two examples, saving or printing will delete the blank pages at the end, but there are reasons they won't go away—like the use of custom masters, changing document property defaults and the aforementioned pagination settings.

~Barb

[RBKearnsJr]

I'm curious, at the book level, the "Pagination" menu item is inactive (grayed out).  Perhaps I'm misunderstanding?

[Barb Binder]

Hi RBKearnsJr :

You can select one file in the book window—use Shift or Control to add to the selection—and then right+click (or use Format > Page Layout > Pagination) to change the pagination settings for the selected files.

~Barb

[Mike Wickham]

Setting pagination to Make Page Count Even can add a blank page, when

there is only an odd number of pages of text. Probably the most common

reason people post with confusion about blank pages, though, is when

they have set a chapter to Delete Empty Pages and FrameMaker keeps

adding blank pages to the end of it. It's because that chapter ends on,

say, a right page and the next chapter is set to start on a right page.

So FrameMaker has to add a blank page to the previous chapter to make it

happen. The fix is then in the following file, not the current one,

where the user is looking to change settings.

Mike Wickham