Turning off Facing Pages causes a blank page

[Chris Christner]

It seems you can't print a PDF as single pages from a document that has Facing Pages turned on. So I turned off Facing Pages temporarily, but I get a blank page where there had been an image that spanned two pages. That's a bug.

[walt.farrell]

You can Export a PDF from a Publisher document that has Facing Pages using the "All Pages" option. Then your exported file will have single pages rather than 2-page spreads.

That may give you what you were looking for.

I assume that when you say "print a PDF" that you mean "print a Publisher document to a PDF writer, producing a PDF file."

You don't have the same option for printing that you have for exporting, [edit: but you shouldn't need it], and I'm not sure what's happening to you with the method you tried. Sorry.

 

 

[R C-R]

11 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

You can Export a PDF from a Publisher document that has Facing Pages using the "All Pages" option. Then your exported file will have single pages rather than 2-page spreads.
{...}
You don't have the same option for printing that you have for exporting...

I have only tested this in the Mac version & only used the Mac 'Open in Preview' option to see what the printed output would (presumably) look like instead of actually printing anything.

That said, what seems to work fine for either printing or exporting is to set the Pages: field to the desired page or page range while using Area > All Spreads for exports or Range > Entire Document for prints. So for example, if in a document set to use facing pages I set the Pages: field to "3" it only prints or exports page 3, or if I set it to "3, 5" it only  prints or exports those two pages, even if they are right side pages on their respective spreads. I can even set it to "5, 3" to print or export those pages in that order.

Of course, anything that spans both pages of a spread will be truncated, cutting off the part on the facing page, but that is to be expected.

Attached is a very simple 27KB print & export test.afpub file with just 3 pages & a mix of master & document page text spanning both pages. If you want, you can use it to try printing or exporting just page 3 as above to see if it works for you. Hopefully you will get something that looks like this:

[Chris Christner]

15 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

You can Export a PDF from a Publisher document that has Facing Pages using the "All Pages" option. Then your exported file will have single pages rather than 2-page spreads.

That may give you what you were looking for.

I assume that when you say "print a PDF" that you mean "print a Publisher document to a PDF writer, producing a PDF file."

You don't have the same option for printing that you have for exporting, and I'm not sure what's happening to you with the method you tried. Sorry.

 

 

I misspoke. I should have said "export a PDF" not "print".  Your remedy of printing a PS or PDF rather than exporting same is a good workaround. But the why export doesn't work the same way as print is mystifying. And the blank page that results from switching from facing pages to single pages is still a bug, at least when compared to QuarkXPress where the switch doesn't mess up graphics. 

[R C-R]

1 minute ago, Chris Christner said:

But the why export doesn't work the same way as print is mystifying.

Did you try the method I mentioned above? What happens if you try to export one or more pages using Area set to All Spreads and entering the desired page number(s) in the Pages field?

[walt.farrell]

1 minute ago, Chris Christner said:

 I should have said "export a PDF" not "print".  Your remedy of printing a PS or PDF rather than exporting same is a good workaround. But the why export doesn't work the same way as print is mystifying.

What I said was that Export supports the "All Pages" option, which will give you individual pages in the PDF rather than 2-page spreads:

Print does not have that option, but it does not need it as it automatically prints individual pages, unless you choose something like Booklet or N-Up.

6 minutes ago, Chris Christner said:

And the blank page that results from switching from facing pages to single pages is still a bug,

Perhaps, but without seeing more information (screenshots, or ideally a sample .afpub document that shows it) I can't say much more.

[Chris Christner]

4 hours ago, R C-R said:

Of course, anything that spans both pages of a spread will be truncated, cutting off the part on the facing page, but that is to be expected.

Actually, I don't expect APu to break a document just because I switch off facing pages. If the competition did likewise, maybe it would be expected behavior, but in QuarkXPress you can switch Facing Pages on or off without losing 2-page images, and when you print, you can use the "Spreads" option  to print as single or facing pages. Be nice if Publisher did the same.

[Chris Christner]

52 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

What I said was that Export supports the "All Pages" option, which will give you individual pages in the PDF rather than 2-page spreads:

So there's no bug. I'm just bumping into APu's way of doing things versus my expectations from working in Quark. Thanks again for your assistance.

[walt.farrell]

You're welcome.

(I would not necessarily say there is no bug. I tend to agree with you that switching Facing Pages off shouldn't lose any data. However, without seeing your document or at least some good screenshots, I can't rule out some kind of user error.)

[Chris Christner]

An 8-page example is attached. While checking out the spreads, please take a look at the picture frames and tell me if you get the Properties button when a frame is selected. For some reason, it doesn't appear in this doc on my Mac.

example.afpub.zip

[walt.farrell]

22 minutes ago, Chris Christner said:

An 8-page example is attached. While checking out the spreads, please take a look at the picture frames and tell me if you get the Properties button when a frame is selected. For some reason, it doesn't appear in this doc on my Mac.

Thanks. I can see that the left half of the (Image) layer that spans spread 4,5 disappears if Facing Pages are turned off. I don't know if that's something the Serif team is aware of.

For your question about picture frames, though, I can only ask: What picture frames? I don't see any in that document.

[Chris Christner]

22 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Thanks. I can see that the left half of the (Image) layer that spans spread 4,5 disappears if Facing Pages are turned off. I don't know if that's something the Serif team is aware of.

For your question about picture frames, though, I can only ask: What picture frames? I don't see any in that document.

Aha! Light begins to dawn. This doc was imported from a PDF. I assumed Publisher put the images in picture frames because when I click on them, the Edit Image and Replace Image buttons appear. If APu didn't put them in picture frames, what frame did it use? Text? That would be weird.

[walt.farrell]

1 minute ago, Chris Christner said:

Aha! Light begins to dawn. This doc was imported from a PDF. I assumed Publisher put the images in picture frames because when I click on them, the Edit Image and Replace Image buttons appear. If APu didn't put them in picture frames, what frame did it use? Text? That would be weird.

They are not in frames at all. They are simply Embedded or Linked image files, floating on the page.

[Chris Christner]

Is that normal? I'm not familiar enough with the app to know.

[Chris Christner]

31 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

They are not in frames at all. They are simply Embedded or Linked image files, floating on the page.

Alright! I don't know why the images were floating, but I did discover Layer > Convert to Picture Frame, so that took care of the problem.

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

I would not necessarily say there is no bug. I tend to agree with you that switching Facing Pages off should lose any data....

Is there a missing "not" in there somewhere?

[walt.farrell]

12 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Is there a missing "not" in there somewhere?

Probably. Or an "n't"

[walt.farrell]

20 minutes ago, Chris Christner said:

but I did discover Layer > Convert to Picture Frame, so that took care of the problem.

Having images that are not in a picture frame should not (and does not, as far as I know) constitute a problem.

And converting that image to a picture frame does not resolve the issue of losing the page 4 content, as far as I can see, when turning off Facing Pages. What's happening there, by the way, is that the entire image ends up on page 5, and its left half extends off the page into the pasteboard. It will only be visible there if you disable View > View Mode > Clip to Canvas.

I don't think I would expect Publisher to split an object into two objects automatically, and that would be required if page 4 were to contain the left half of the image. At this point I think that's something you need to handle manually.

[Chris Christner]

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

Having images that are not in a picture frame should not (and does not, as far as I know) constitute a problem.

Except that you can't shift the images inside the not-frame or resize them until the not-frame is converted into a picture frame.

Quote

And converting that image to a picture frame does not resolve the issue of losing the page 4 content, as far as I can see, when turning off Facing Pages. What's happening there, by the way, is that the entire image ends up on page 5, and its left half extends off the page into the pasteboard. It will only be visible there if you disable View > View Mode > Clip to Canvas.

True, the issue about the frame was separate from facing pages not working as expected.

Quote

I don't think I would expect Publisher to split an object into two objects automatically, and that would be required if page 4 were to contain the left half of the image. At this point I think that's something you need to handle manually.

Quark doesn't create a blank page when you turn off Facing Pages, but InDesign does. So it looks like Publisher is following the leader on this one. I think you and R C-R are right that this isn't a bug.

[walt.farrell]

3 minutes ago, Chris Christner said:

Except that you can't shift the images inside the not-frame or resize them until the not-frame is converted into a picture frame.

Well, of course, if there is no frame you cannot shift an image within it.  But you can move the image on the page using the Move Tool. If you're talking about recomposing (e.g., masking) the image so less of it shows, no, that would require a frame, or another shape to mask the image. Or, since we're talking about Publisher, you could use the Vector Crop Tool.

To resize the image on the page, just drag one of its control handles, as you would for any other object.