Page Layouts Not Displaying Properly in PDF Output

[JDFinn]

I have a problem with page layouts displaying properly. I have a Standard page layout for our clients, and an Internal page layout for our support team. I created a Watermark Image and applied it to the page layout properties and in the layout, it looks fine.

example1.png

In the TOC, I applied the page layout to the document that needs the watermark.

example2.png

When the build completes, the pdf I generated does not have the image on every page. Out of 37 pages, it puts the image on only 7 of those pages. There does not appear to be any rhyme/reason to which pages it puts the image on....some of the pages have text only, some have text/images, some have a variety of headings, etc. I've tried to figure out what the logic is, but am not having any luck at that.

FYI, I've tried adjusting various options in the TOC Printed Output properties and get the same results.

Any help/thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Joanne Finn

[cdschroeder]

Hi Joanne. Each topic in the TOC can have its own print settings. And page layouts can be changed anywhere there is a page layout or chapter break. So if you set the first topic as a chapter break and select a specific page layout, that page layout will only affect pages up until the next page layout/chapter break. If you have other topics which utilize breaks, check them out and make sure that 1) you actually want the break there, and 2) if you do, that the correct page layout is selected.

To easily view page layout/chapter breaks, you can toggle the View type from Tree to Grid at the top of the TOC Editor. Chapter breaks are highlighted in green and page layout breaks are highlighted in a light orange. You can also view the assigned page layout for each break at a glance. Take a look through there and see if you can track down any breaks that might be causing problems.

[JDFinn]

Thank you cdschroeder. I didn't know about the grid view, so I did look at that.

My TOC only has 3 topics in it.

example3.png

example4.png

The middle topic has 37 pages in it. (designed for html with drop-downs and such)

So, the break types are not what's affecting it.

I went back and viewed the pdf again, and still no logic. Of the 37 pages, the image is only showing up on pages 2, 5, 19, 21, 23, 34, and 35. I've verified that those specific areas do not have anything special such as a page break or anything. In fact, one of the pages with the image continues text from the previous page without an image.

[cdschroeder]

Hmm, that is odd. Out of curiosity, does the title page (in the first topic) use the same page layout? And do you have any "empty left" pages in your page layouts?

Another thought - do you use page-break attributes for any of your headings? If so, is there any correlation with the watermarks?

[JDFinn]

The Title page uses a separate page layout and works as it should.
I'm not aware of any empty left pages in my layouts. Do you mean in the actual file (see graphic below)? Looks like it should to me.

example1.png

And my headings do not have page-break attributes. I'm currently working on a separate style-sheet for printed versions, but haven't applied it yet.

[JDFinn]

AHA! I figured out what the problem is.

I turned on editing in Acrobat and see the image is there, but it's behind everything on most of the pages. Not sure if this is a Flare setting I need to look at or a pdf setting. Somehow, I need to make sure that the Image is displaying in front, or maybe I'll just put it in the Header.

[cdschroeder]

Ohh that's interesting! Glad you figured it out. How did you apply the image? Did you set it as the page background, or add it inside a frame? I add my images via the page properties > background image setting, which seems to work fine.

[JDFinn]

I did add it as a background image. So during the conversion to PDF, it must be converting it to an individual image and making everything layered.