Fixed Layout ePUB: headers and footers from master page disappearing

[TeaBerryCreative]

I am a well-seasoned book designer working on a recipe book. Because of the nature of this type of book, and the fact that in inDesign, the pages are designed in several linked text boxes/columns, etc., this book MUST be a fixed-layout ePUB. (Please, do NOT suggest exporting to a reflowable ebook because FXL is out-dated—it's not an option.)

The problem is, when I export to fixed-layout ePUB, random pages are dropping the headers and footers/page numbers. I have even tried moving these items from the master page to the actual page, but they still disappear!

Any thoughts on why this is happening? I have read in other forums that exporting to IDML might help, but it doesn't, and in fact, the IDML file opens up with broken formatting (I lose all of the painstakingly placed linked text boxes and columns), basically it dumbs down the whole design, but even doing so, when exported to FXL, the headers/footers still disappear.

I also have 16 different master pages because the author wanted different headings for different sections. I had been basing new master pages off of existing ones, and thought that was the issue, but removing the "based on" element doesn't do anything different.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

If IDMLing results in broken formatting - this means that your file is corrupted internally.

Can you try to fix some of those broken places - and try IDMLing again - to check if fixings will stay? 

Alternative to IDMLing is to move all pages to the beginning of a new, blank document with the same page size and margins, then deleting last page - but this won't move unused stuff - colors, styles, etc. 

[Eugene Tyson]

Have you tested doing it in chunks of export. Often divide and conquer narrows down issues. 

Export 50% of the pages see if the issue persists, then the other 50%

See which side it fails on, if it fails on one side, keep dividing to narrow down page(s)

If it fails on both sides then keep going it could be in both sides. 

Strange the IDML breaks everything, it should rebuild the file. Suggests could be corruption somewhere, a text frame, image, link, it could be anything. 

If exporting in chunks is not an option. 

Then duplicate your document. 

And in the duplicate delete sections and export and see if it works. 

If it does then you know the issue is in that section. 

@James Gifford—NitroPress might have more insights.

[Laura Brady]

It's very likely that those headers are there in the HTML but are hiding behind something — an image, a background colour, perhaps even a text box that is obscuring them. The fixed-layout export from InDesign is truly a mess, unfortunately. Can you isolate any reasons why the glitchy pages are happening? Or is it random? 

[TeaBerryCreative · Accepted solution]

Thank you.

I attached a screenshot. I had the page number variable (and header is the same) in its own text box, in front of vector graphic page dividers that were grouped together. Apparently, even though they were behind the variable text, they were covering it up in export. I ended up placing each side of the page divider INLINE inside the text box with the variable, and it fixed the issue. In the second screenshot, you can see the invisible spacing on either side of the number.

<shrug>. Go figure!