How to safely remove the first page?

[Gianni Becattini]

I was forced to pass to the Book/Chapter structure, to avoid continuous crashes with Publisher 2. In this way things appear, until now, be more quiet.

But I have a stupid problem that I cannot overcome, hope in some help.

All my chapters begin with a right page, then a certain number of fronting pages, then a last left page (see the attachment 1, should not be clear).

The question is: how can I remove the first page without making all the other pages to burst in the most complete confusion? In other word, how to transform the document to start on left page?

I tried Document setup/Model/start on left page, but again, all the document gets messed up (see attachment 2).

Thanks

[lacerto]

I am not sure if there is another way than manually move the page content. If you zoom out far enough, you might be able to select all content of all left pages in one go and then move the selection to the right the amount of difference between the inner and outer margins, and then repeat the same on the right side pages and move the same amount to the left. Then remove the first page. 

The following clip shows a simplified case, but if you use a preference where partial marquee selection selects an object, you might be able to select all page objects in one go. If not, then zoom out less until you can clearly see the objects, and do the job in parts:

 

 

[thomaso]

What is your final goal with the switch? – Doesn't the Affinity book feature allow right pages as start pages?

I doubt such a switch will work without additional, possibly massive need of manual layout adjustments. Considering that switching from right to left does force on purpose all spread layouts (e.g. page 4/5) to become separated in two pages of two different spreads. (e.g. page 4/5 –> 3/4)

Thus it is not clear what you want to achieve. Keeping spread layouts together would require an new page as start page of the document, to preserve the content on page 1 before & after the switch identical, plus do manual adjustments caused by the switch – regardless whether you add the page before or after the switch.

. .

In case you do not want to maintain spread layouts you need to duplicate those objects (e.g. background colors, images) that run over two pages – because the switch will make those spread wide objects appear only on one of the two pages after the switch.

[Gianni Becattini]

Thanks for your time.

I found a simple solution, that avoided any "hard" modification. I set the last page of each chapter as fully blank (black in my case), and the first page of the next chapter with a chapter title. The result is as shown in the attachment. Luckily for me, it was exactly what I wished to do...

[thomaso]

Nice that you managed it to work as wanted. – But I still wonder: For what reason do you need or want the first page to change from right to left? And in what way is the Affinity Book feature involved in this approach?

[Gianni Becattini]

Because all my chapter are son of a single document, now split, and thus have that unwanted first page.