Unintentional blank page in document

I have a document where the first 6 pages I set as “First Page” page styles. Page 7 is my first numbered page and set as “Left Page” followed by a “Right Page”.

Somehow I have a blank page between page 1 and 2 that I see in print preview. For the life of me I can’t find where the blank page is inserted.

I’m attaching the document and the screen shots of the print preview.

Chapter 1 ~ In the Blink of an Eye.odt (32.7 KB)


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You changed the Left Page style so that it can also sit on a right page (Page Style dialog box, Page tab, option Page layout). As a result, the page numbered 1 (which should be a right page) is marked up as Left Page. So the next page, which should be a left page, but which is marked up as a Right Page is forced to be the next right page, and so you get an inserted blank page.
It’s rather dangerous to make such changes in standard page styles. Making a Left Page style applicable for right pages as well is very confusing. Try http://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=71&t=44607 for some suggestions to get an ordered set of page styles for use in more complex documents like yours.

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@JUSTROB: the solution to your question was given by @anon87010807 , however you’re heading into future problems. Using page styles is good practice but formatting your novel with paragraph and character styles is a starting requirement. Presently, everything is Default Paragraph Style with typographical variations applied manually. You vertically space with empty paragraphs. In one short sentence, you use Writer like a mechanical typewriter. Using styles, you could also automate your TOC. And with fields, your headers can also be dynamically generated (you’ll discover when you reach chapter 2 that you can have only one static header per page style requiring you to create one page style per chapter unless you go for “dynamic” header).
And, last, has your document ever been in contact with Word? It looks like it underwent conversion from .doc(x) which brought in weird styles and polluted the document structure (which in your case is really unimportant because your novel is not structured = uses a single paragraph style).

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@floris_v: That was the problem however, I didn’t intentionally change the page style.

Thank you!

@ajlittoz : I had originally created this document as a .doc originally. I’m a quadriplegic and use a mouthstick to type (hen-pecking each word letter-by-letter). I “thought” I created a new document as an .odt then copied in the pdf unformatted text. Apparently, that did not work. As for paragraph styles, YES, I’ve been using LO Writer as a typewriter because, though I’m an electrical engineer, I just am not finding it in me to go through, what in my humble opinion, is a difficult manual to follow and have tried to stumble on a youtube tutorial but have lost patients for that as well.

So sadly, I guess I’m left to stumble along with this difficult typewriter. I hope my open frustrations aren’t taken in offense.

@ JUSTROB Not at all. My respect for your perseverance. The whole bag of tricks, if I may call the styles paradigm in LibreOffice that, was invented to make life easier for writers, who can then apply Heading 1 style, forcing a new page with its associated page style in one fell swoop. But the documentation is a long read, and the learning curve is rather steep.