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A
Ami5E7C
Participant
January 27, 2022
Answered

Make chapters start on new page in reflowable ePub

  • January 27, 2022
  • 2 replies
  • 5497 views

I've laid out a book in InDesign (CC v 16.4) on a Mac (Montery v 12.1). The entire book is in one document but each chapter is a separate story. When I export to reflowable ePub, I can't get the chapters to start on a new page.  They all flow from the chapter before with just the space I've assigned in the "chapter #" paragraph style I created. How do I get the chapter to start on a new page?

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Correct answer Kelli Jae Baeli

This works for me:

After selecting for the chapter (or any other heading you want on the next page), Fill in the export options to make it do that. See screenshot:

2 replies

X
XtinaHowell
Known Participant
November 29, 2024

I was having the same problem and tried the suggestions that others posted here but was still having problems for some chapters and not for others. I finally figured out that the chapters that ended with the last paragraph with a paragraph break before the page break did not break into a new chapter, and the ones where there was no paragraph break worked as intended!

 

James Gifford—NitroPress
James Gifford—NitroPress
Legend
November 29, 2024

I thnk you may be looking in the wrong place for the actual reason this was a fix.

 

If a paragraph is —

  • Given a page-break setting in its style;
  • Tagged as a document split style;
  • and Document Split is set (using "follow paragraph settings")

 

— it should appear at the top of its own virtual page in [pretty much] any paginating reader. Little else affects this behavior. I'd suggest that in deleting what seemed to be an extra paragraph perhaps shifted style settings or had some other secondary affect, but what precedes a 'split' paragraph has little to do with the action.

James Gifford—NitroPress
James Gifford—NitroPress
Legend
December 2, 2024

Okay... Perhaps, but I didn't change the styles and didn't change anything other than deleting the paragraph break between the last paragraph and the page break and that fixed my issue. Any chapters that had this extra paragraph break had the issue where the chapter would not properly break to the next page. 

 

I wonder if this is an issue with the latest InDesign update. I didn't have this issue last time I did an epub. I noticed a recently released self-published book I purchased recently had this same issue. 


I'd have to see your file — preferably one before the fix — to be sure, but just based on experience with ID and EPUB, it's not likely that the paragraph, by itself, had anything to do with the break issue. More likely there was a "phantom" or tacked-on style between it and the chapter start that confused the export and the EPUB reader. One of those cases where you do something, and it makes a problem go away... but not necessarily for an obvious or linear reason.

 

Everything about proper page breaks/chapter starts in EPUB — except for one minor alternate formatting method — is in the paragraph that defines and starts the break. I can't think of anything (barring that one caveat) about preceding content that would make a difference in a page break, other than a collision of bad formatting.

 

ETA: And, yes, it could be due to an ID change; the EPUB export is evolving at a steady pace in recent releases, mostly to add/adapt to accessibility. It could be processing your source files differently as a result. But I'd say this is a case of exposing a formatting problem rather than being a bug or a problem in its own right.

 

ETA2: I didn't address it, but it sounds as if this paragraph you deleted was empty. The EPUB export deletes all empty paragraphs of any style, and depending on how the process goes, it could have transferred the style from that paragraph to the succeeding one. By deleting it, there was no style to transfer... hence the "fix."

A
Ami5E7CAuthor
Participant
January 27, 2022

I finally found the solution. I opened the Paragraph Style Options for my "chapter #" style. 

In "Keep Options" I chose Start Paragraph "On Next Page." 

Voila! That did the trick.

    James Gifford—NitroPress
    James Gifford—NitroPress
    Legend
    January 27, 2022

    That's pretty much how it's done in all documents, print, PDF etc.

     

    With EPUB, though, it depends on the reader. Not all of them will break to a new screen-page on a page-break directive, because of the HTML basis for the document. It works on through to Kindle and in some small-screen readers, but if you open your doc on a full-screen reader like a browser plug-in, you won't see page breaks.

      Kelli Jae Baeli
      Kelli Jae BaeliCorrect answer
      Inspiring
      May 29, 2023

      This works for me:

      After selecting for the chapter (or any other heading you want on the next page), Fill in the export options to make it do that. See screenshot:

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