Aligning index columns when there's a "header"

Fiona · Post by **Fiona** » Tue Jan 31, 2023 7:17 am

We have a two-column index in our PDFs. The index has sub-headings corresponding to the letters of the alphabet, and there is a vertical spacing built in to the style of these so that there's a gap above them. This is great most of the time, but on the first page of the index the two columns are not aligned (the second column starts higher up the page than the first one) – this also applies to any other column that happens to start with a sub-heading.

I do appreciate that I'm being beyond picky now, but I can't be the only person with this issue and I'm hoping that some guru out there might have a trick to get around this!

In summary, I want to be able to tell Flare that the first item in a column should always have padding-top: 0px and margin-top: 0px even when that item would have had padding or a margin if it was located elsewhere. Is this feasible?

Thanks. Fiona

Post by **Nita Beck** » Tue Jan 31, 2023 3:40 pm

“Picky” should be every tech writer’s middle name.

Have you tried the “Collapse top margin” option in your PDF target?

https://help.madcapsoftware.com/flare20 ... argins.htm

I see there’s a note (a caveat) at the bottom of the topic that might apply to your situation.

Fiona · Post by **Fiona** » Wed Feb 01, 2023 7:49 am

Thanks Nita. I got very excited when I saw this, then I checked my PDF settings and I already have that option checked. Looking at the CSS we have used padding rather than margins. Time to play with the CSS! I wouldn't have known where to look without your advice though, so thanks again. Fiona

Fiona · Post by **Fiona** » Thu Feb 02, 2023 6:54 am

CSS amended and all is well. Thanks for the help Nita

sarrantsvt · Post by **sarrantsvt** » Fri Feb 03, 2023 5:06 am

CSS amended and all is well.

Can you post the details of what you did? It will help others.

Fiona · Post by **Fiona** » Mon Feb 06, 2023 7:15 am

sarrantsvt wrote:Can you post the details of what you did? It will help others.

In the CSS, I updated the sub-heading style to use margins instead of padding.

In the Project Organiser, I double-clicked on the PDF target. In the Target Editor that opened, I navigated to the Advanced tab. In the Margins section, I selected Collapse top margin at top of page/column.

No more random vertical space at the top of pages/columns.

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Aligning index columns when there's a "header"

Aligning index columns when there's a "header"

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