If you’ve been using PlanetPress Design 7, you might be wondering where the “Force Front Page” option went, or how to add a blank page on odd-numbered page duplex jobs to avoid the following record printing on the “back” of that last page.

Fear not, Connect does this all for you. Whenever a job is set to “duplex”, if it so happens that the number of pages is odd, a blank page is automatically inserted in the job in order to prevent this sort of thing. We can do this simply because we know exactly what a record is and how many pages it produces, we control the overflow, so it becomes trivial to set this up.

Note: Here, the “blank” page means “without contents”. The Master Page will still be present on the back, but nothing will appear on it.

This is a pretty common setup for a lot of service companies: At the back of the first sheet, a terms & conditions page (generally, a static one) appears, with the invoice (or other transactional data) continuing on the front of the second sheet. And, of course, the T&C page shouldn’t be counted in the pagination, right? Of course not.

The setup for this is simple enough:

• Create a Master Page called, for example, Terms and Conditions. Enter your text, design, formatting, etc. Make sure it all fits on that single page.
• Right-click on your Section 1 in the Print Context, and click Sheet Configuration.
• Check the Duplex option at the top of the dialog.
• Untick the Same for all positions checkbox.
• In the First Sheet section, use the following options:
  • Allow content on: Front Only
  • Master Page Front: Master 1 (or whatever is your usual master page)
  • Master Page Back: Terms and Conditions.
• Setup the rest of the pages as usual.

Because Allow Content is set to only place contents on the front, but a Master Page has been set to the back of the page, the T&C will appear without any contents. Overflow of transaction items will thus flow from Page 1 (First Sheet, Front) to Page 2 (Second Sheet, Front)!

Additionally, if doing pagination, the Content Page Number (Insert > Special Character > Markers > Content Page Number) and Content Page Count does not count pages that do not “Allow Content”. This means the T&C page would not appear as “Page X of N” when generating output. Cool, eh?