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epub conversion adding extra blank pages to ends of chapters

Participant ,
Feb 22, 2020 Feb 22, 2020

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I can't figure out why this is happening. Another user posted about it in 2016, and the post was moved to the "epub forum" and was never answered. I have known of the (theoretical) existance of this forum, but seems like something changed on the website and we can't actually search for anything in that "forum" or post anything directly to it—even if we add the epub subject tag. But trying anyway.

 

The file is currently built in CC2018 and I have not really run into this before. The chapters are in a Book file. There is no overset text, nor extra returns or page breaks at the ends of the file. All text and objects are in a single thread in the documents.

 

When previewing the epub in iBooks there seems to be anywhere for 5 to 16 or so added blanks. looking at the HTML in the unzipped files these are divs with a uniquely numbered image container and a class, within a Basic Text Fram class. Like so:

<div class="_idGenObjectLayout-3">
<div id="_idContainer287" class="Basic-Text-Frame">
</div>
</div>
<div class="_idGenObjectLayout-3">
<div id="_idContainer288" class="Basic-Text-Frame">
</div>
</div>

I don't have any blank boxes in the files that I can find. 

Has anyone else figured out why the extra pages and how to avoid that?

I can removed them in the HTML code, but I would surely prefer not to have to. There ARE background colred pages in the document on other hidden layers (used in the print version) but these shoudn't be exporting at all. Seem's like it would be many more pages ifo that were the case.

 

Two perhaps related questions: 

1. What is the corrct choice for exporting a book with images to include "classes" or not to include. The default is to include and I've always done that. 

2. Why does an epub exported from a book file with multiple separate ID chapter files create another CSS for each chapter? These are mostly full of idGenObjectAttributes, but why couldn't those be all in one CSS? I believe they are needed for calling out the sizes of objects when they are are all different—I've selected Preserve Appearance and Relative to Text Flow for most images. This is a complex reflowable ebook and writing a single CSS myself would be impossible for me. But all these CSS docs are pretty unwieldly.

 

 

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correct answers 1 Correct answer

Community Beginner , Oct 03, 2020 Oct 03, 2020

Hello,

 

So I was having a similar problem—when I produced reflowable epubs they were fine in Kindle Previewer but for iBooks all sorts of blank pages were added at the end, which were likely related to original smart reflow preferences or something.  I occasionally look at these support forums when I'm stuck at something but generally balk at going into the HDML/CSS code, and when I see an explanation with a screenshot of 15 "div" commands my eyes tend to mist over.  No disrespect to those who do

...

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Participant ,
Feb 22, 2020 Feb 22, 2020

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I may have found the issue with the extra pages. When the book was reflowed it somehow got out of the Master Text Frames on some pages but was still linked to the master text frames on others. This left a bunch of blank text frames on the pages behind the new frames with text in them. I've seen this happen before, but didn't equate it with adding pages in the epub. Too bad there isn't a script to locate all empty text boxes and delete them! (Or maybe there is?) I located as many as I could find and deleted and that seems to have done the trick.

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New Here ,
Aug 11, 2020 Aug 11, 2020

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I struggled with and worked around this identical problem by editing chapter files containing extra pages. I'd unzip my epub, then delete extra page related html; an abbreviated example shown below:

</div>
<div class="_idGenObjectLayout-1">
<div id="_idContainer061">
</div>
</div>

.

.

.
<div class="_idGenObjectLayout-1">
<div id="_idContainer071">
</div>
</div>

I explain this to say thank you and ask if you've learned anything new related to this problem since your Feb 22, 2020 post.

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Participant ,
Aug 11, 2020 Aug 11, 2020

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Yes, Bill, 

This is what I've done too. I think it's worthwhile if you notice this is happening to visually search through the InDD before conversion and eliminate all the empty boxes you can find. Saves some time (and possible messed up code in my case) over messing with the html. But yes, almost every book requires a little tweaking in my experience. 

 

Nothing new to report on the extra box problem—if we want the text to actually reflow if we change master pages they need to have the master (primary) text frame, and this seems to cause the issue. I know no way around it.

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New Here ,
Sep 02, 2020 Sep 02, 2020

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Hi Sue,

 

I'm having the same issue. How did you find these "empty boxes"? Similarly, how do you unzip an epub file to look at the code? The Adobe technical team does not know. Please help!

 

Jessica

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Community Beginner ,
Oct 03, 2020 Oct 03, 2020

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Hello,

 

So I was having a similar problem—when I produced reflowable epubs they were fine in Kindle Previewer but for iBooks all sorts of blank pages were added at the end, which were likely related to original smart reflow preferences or something.  I occasionally look at these support forums when I'm stuck at something but generally balk at going into the HDML/CSS code, and when I see an explanation with a screenshot of 15 "div" commands my eyes tend to mist over.  No disrespect to those who do this for a living, it should be stressed, but we all draw our lines somewhere.  Anyway, I found a script which will eliminate these troublesome hidden text frames that were padding my epub with all sorts of extra pages on the end.  It's called Delete Empty Text frames and is freely available here.  It worked for me, so hopefully it will be of some use to others. 

 

Cheers,

 

Howard 

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New Here ,
Oct 05, 2020 Oct 05, 2020

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Hi Howard,

 

Thank you so much for your response. I was able to eliminate the problem by exporting the book according to the "articles" as opposed to what was on screen. There must have been hidden text frames somewhere. Thanks again!

 

Warmly,

Jessica

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Community Beginner ,
Oct 05, 2020 Oct 05, 2020

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Hi Jessica,

Well, perhaps you can use this another time. I thought of using the
article panels too (I spent quite a bit of time dragging each text frame
away to see if there was one lurking behind before I decided to go
script-hunting), but as I am in the process of churning out 100 (!) epubs
according to a given template, and they all seem to have this problem for
iBooks (must be related to my settings or something), it seemed vastly more
efficient to just incorporate using the script into my workflow, which is
working like a charm.

Best wishes,

Howard

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New Here ,
Apr 06, 2021 Apr 06, 2021

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That's fantastic - thank you! I never ever would have solved this problem on my own!  

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Community Beginner ,
Apr 06, 2021 Apr 06, 2021

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Glad it could be of some help.

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New Here ,
Apr 21, 2021 Apr 21, 2021

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That worked great! Thank you!

 

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Community Beginner ,
Jan 16, 2022 Jan 16, 2022

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THANK YOU!
I ran the script and all my empty pages disappeared from the epub. 
Heike

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Guest
Mar 07, 2022 Mar 07, 2022

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Thank you so much HS Burton! That solved my problem, it was driving me nuts. Now I have to find out why my footer and page number is showing up at the en of my book when I have not formated it that way in indesign.

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Mentor ,
Feb 23, 2020 Feb 23, 2020

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You state that you are working on a complex reflowable epub in InDesign. Have you ever considered a dedicated epub tool like Jutoh instead? It is catered towards epub creation, while InDesign really is not (resulting in issues like yours). InDesign also hides the underlying content structure, while Jutoh exposes it, granting full control over the epub generation workflow.

 

I moved away from InDesign for any reflowable epub work. It is just too fragile in my opinion.

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Community Expert ,
Feb 24, 2020 Feb 24, 2020

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That's interesting, what is the workflow if you have an InDesign document that you want to take into Jutoh?  

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Participant ,
Feb 27, 2020 Feb 27, 2020

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My goal is to produce beautiful functional books cost effectively from the SAME files as the print book. Books have such a low profit margin that I doubt my publishers would support me doing layout twice. 

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Community Expert ,
Feb 27, 2020 Feb 27, 2020

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No chance!

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Community Expert ,
Jan 16, 2022 Jan 16, 2022

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Coming along a little late here, Derek, but I do dual-format publications—in reflowable—all the time. One INDD file, export to PDF for print and EPUB for Kindle. It helps if you create the whole thing from (more or less) scratch, but I've gone from a finished print edition to dual/Kindle many times as well.


╟ Word & InDesign to Kindle & EPUB: a Guide to Pro Results (Amazon) ╢

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Explorer ,
Feb 18, 2021 Feb 18, 2021

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As long as you do fixed layout this can be done fairly simply with some small tweeks.

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New Here ,
Oct 07, 2020 Oct 07, 2020

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The easiest solution, may God bless me for it, is to make the page break with a paragraph style that is not used in headings at all, and be a paragraph style only for the page break.

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Community Beginner ,
Oct 07, 2020 Oct 07, 2020

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Well, I don't think that would work well for me, because I've naturally
split the epub using header paragraph styles that I've used in my NAV TOC
and in-book TOC, so in order to do things that way it seems to me that I'd
have to add a "dummy paragraph style" right before all of those, which
seems far more trouble than it's worth to me, particularly given that, as I
said, the script I'm using seems to do what I need perfectly well with a
couple of clicks.

More generally, however, I am certainly not claiming that I have found *the*
solution or even the best solution, merely one that seems to work well for
me and thought there might be others out there who might be having the same
difficulties and appreciate it as well. Å chacun son goût.

Regards,

Howard

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Community Beginner ,
Jun 03, 2021 Jun 03, 2021

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My extra blank pages issue is not being caused by hidden frames, but by my images. I can't figure out the right combination of image size, image settings, and object export setting. Even small images tend to add extra space at the end (on Apple Books only by the way). Could the issue be with the image's actual size, not it's display box?

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Participant ,
Jun 16, 2021 Jun 16, 2021

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quote

My extra blank pages issue is not being caused by hidden frames, but by my images. I can't figure out the right combination of image size, image settings, and object export setting. Even small images tend to add extra space at the end (on Apple Books only by the way). Could the issue be with the image's actual size, not it's display box?


By @Fab Dog

I don't know how that's happening. It's pretty tough to diagnose without seeing the code it is spitting out. 

Are your images in line, in the flow of text?

 

As for settings and sizes, it's taken me a long time to figure this out. You don't want to select "Use Existing Image for Graphic Objects" on export if your images are very large, as that will make your file size too big. Play around with the Object export settings for each image as this will produce slightly different results in the EPUB. But again, I don't think that's the issue with the extra pages. Yes, I think it was mainly an iBooks issue, but you can't really test it in every type of ereader, so it's good to fix it.

 

Can you unzip the epub and look at what's happening in an html editor, like dreamweaver, or BBEdit? (or even in Text Edit) That would at least show you if there are extra divs at the bottoms of your chapters, and it may tell you what they are.

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Community Beginner ,
Jun 17, 2021 Jun 17, 2021

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Hi, Sue! Thank you so much for your help!

 

My images are anchored ABOVE LINE, and I am not selecting the "Use Existing Image for Graphic Objects".

 

When you say play around with the Object export setting, can you elaborate?

I'm not that great with HTML, but I will look into your suggestion!

Thanks again!

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New Here ,
Jan 12, 2024 Jan 12, 2024

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I'm having a different problem, which i haven't seen here yet. I am getting a blnk page one time -- between the introduction and Chapter 1. I have tried every kind of workaround that i can think of, and have isolated the problem to the paragraph style for the first element of the new chapter -- the chapter number. When i remove the chapter number for chapter 1, then there is no blank page. But if i create a new paragraph style based on the original, i have the same problem. And every other chapter is fine. I think the problem is with the keep options, but have tried every variation, to no effect. And yes, i ran the text frame script, but that doesn't help. Anyone have any thoughts? Am out of ideas. 

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