Deleting a page

I have a document that I frequently update. This document was previously 2 pages but is now contained to one page. When printing, unless I remember to specify to print one page only, 2 pieces of paper go through to printer. How do I delete the second, unused, page in the document?

I sympathize. I looked all through the menus for some way to show ‘pages’ (so I could delete one) or even a delete-page command. I thought, surely they wouldn’t re-create the ‘select and delete all the invisible formatting characters’ feature of Word. But yes.

My solution: go to “table properties” (either right-click or in the table toolbar), go to the text flow tab and un-check the “Break” box. Also maybe try playing with the “allow row to break across pages” box. Hope that helps!

Same problem here. No solution works.
What a mess.
FIX THAT BUG please and offer a ‘DELETE PAGE’ Button/Menu.

Well, it depends. First of all, you should set non printable characters to visible (ctrl+F10). Then, if it’s a text, delete every line of empty text under the last useful one. If there is a table at the bottom of the first page (so you can’t delete the empty line at the top of the second one), place the cursor after the last character of the last cell of your table (that is, the one in the last row of the last column) and press ctrl+maj+del.

Does one of these solve your problem?

For those of you unsure what key is ‘maj’ - try your shift key.

Thanks John, I didn’t notice this Gallicism.

OH MY GOD, THANK YOU!!! I’ve been trying to solve this problem for MONTHS. This did it. Thank you Thank you Thank you!!

I had a page template with background template graphics+text. I unwrapped template from page for editing and finally deleted all the content in that unwrapped page. There is no content, but I cannot delete the empty page. I can’t find any single hidden character, paragraph, whatever that is still locking the page.

I found nasty way to fix this. Changed odt extension to zip and then I found in the content.xml the following:

<draw:rect text:anchor-type="page" text:anchor-page-number="1" draw:z-index="0" draw:style-name="gr1" draw:text-style-name="P21" svg:width="19.201cm" svg:height="28.54cm" svg:x="0.7cm" svg:y="0.7cm">

which after removal and reverting odt extension fixed my page.

However I wish to know how to fix this by the interface, not a hack like that.
If one would like to check, I am attaching the file - test-empty-page.odt.

Brgs
Norbert

There are a couple of ‘clues’ in your document. Click on the first page. The cursor is huge and at the right-hand page side. Move your mouse pointer to the header area. Move it slowly up and down over this area. It will change from a text cursor (bottom) to an arrow (top). On a blank page it should always be a text cursor. Move the pointer slowly upwards until it changes to an arrow. Click here. A large drawing object is anchored to the page. You can now delete it.

Perhaps I gave insufficient information in my original question. I am using an iMac with 10.6 OS. I am using a HP Deskjet Printer, Model 3050A. There is no text on the second page. It appears that since there once was text on the page the program thinks the page should still be there even if it is blank. Thanks for the prompt response.

Well, did you set non printable characters as visible? If so, you should see black dots instead of spaces, arrows where there are tabs and typical characters for end of paragraphs. Often, the problem you describe is caused by empty lines one forgot to delete.

Thank you for the suggestions so far, however, following your instructions reveals no visible markings of any kind on page 2. On my keyboard F10 is the Audio Mute toggle button. I have tried
several combinations of shift, control, option, and command buttons with F10 but all I get is the speakers turning off and on.

Ok, so go to View > Nonprinting characters. If it doesn’t show any nonprinting character, see this page : Nonprinting characters invisible even with "View Nonprinting Characters" checked

You might be a victim of the non-function key. Some keyboards (mostly laptops) have an extra Fn-key which works as a switch for the real function keys. try fn+ctrl+F10.

Thank you all for your help. It took a while for me with my very limited technical knowledge to figure out what you were telling me, but I finally got it. I eliminated the non-viewable characters and, “POOF” I’m back to one page. Again many, many thanks.

You’re welcome. To help other visitors to find answers to their questions, please mark my answer as correct (tick the grey check sign at the left of my answer).

None of this makes any sense to a non-techie like myself. I simply want to eliminate a document. Nowhere in this application to I find even the remotest clue on how to accomplish it. A simple targeting of the document with my mouse and depressing the delete key is sufficient on most text writing applications. Much as I would applaud a “free” competitor to Microsoft’s Word program, libreoffice is confusing, very technical (to me) and quite frustrating in my attempts to use it. I will probably remove it from my PC. I find the free Abi Word application very easy to use and I don’t have to wade through a lot of non-informative “help” files to operate it successfully.

@gpharv.tepfer, it is difficult to provide an exact answer as the problem may be caused by a variety of issues. In the case of @Norbi771 it was a hidden drawing object extending into the margin. If the text content does not run over onto a further page the usual cause is some sort of object (image, drawing, table, frame, text box, etc.) protruding into the bottom margin. It may however be caused by content specifically hidden.

Some ‘non-technical’ users will find the concept of a “hidden drawing object” not very intuitive. Of course it’s perfectly obvious to computer geeks. It just (a) doesn’t correspond to anything in real life and (b) is INVISIBLE (and there apparently is no ‘make everything invisible, visible’ command) and as a general rule - which I imagine is confirmed by hundreds of questions on this forum - having invisible things (that have effects) in a UI is confusing to people. Sometimes, even techies.