I am working on the final formatting of a book my friend and I have been writing about repairing old radios and tube equipment. The publisher wants the entire book in PDF format once it’s completely finished, including the cover illustration/text; I have been working in Open Office for everything and will convert the file to PDF when it’s done.
The problem is, I can’t get Open Office to only start numbering pages AFTER the cover page. (actually, I’d prefer it start numbering on the fourth page, as there are a couple of copyright pages etc. before the book starts.)
I tried turning off the footer field on the non-numbered pages, but that turns off the footer for all pages. You can’t do it selectively.
I tried leaving the page number field blank until I got to the page where I want the numbers to start, but the program insists on starting the numbers on the book cover no matter what I do.
Is there any way around this? If I convert it to a PDF, will I be able to do this? (I don’t have Acrobat.)
This is doable in Word (a helpful option there is Layout > Breaks > Next Page break), don’t know about Open Office at the moment but that might help. But even it Word the behavior is kind of a hassle. For my dissertation I had to do a mix of Arabic and Roman numerals mixed with blank numbered page, and it was such a pain. Your problem is simpler but maybe this will help.
My workaround was to make separate Word documents numbered differently. Then use either the paid version of Acrobat or a free online converter (here’s one, not necessarily the best one) to combine the PDFs into a single document.
think of two separate files … one pdf-file contains cover (outside/inside) … and the second pdf-file contains 64pg of contents. the 64pg contents will, naturally, start at pg1 … last will be pg64. go visit a book-store, or library, and examine a few books … one book a soft-cover … one book a hardcover. see for yourself.
and, make sure you embed the fonts … images are at least 200dpi … and ink-saturation levels do not exceed 300. reputable in-house shops should have no problem converting rgb to cmyk.
I will second that suggestion. Prepare two separate pdf documents, one with no page numbers and and combine them. I assume there are programs that do this. I know one (pdftex), but the learning curve on that is steep, although it is easy once you have learned.
not necessary to combine the two files into one file … the publisher is only asking for the submitted items to be in the form of *.pdf files … he is not asking for one single file. as for online converting services … i’ve used zamzar.com in the past … just make sure you check for virus / malware before downloading the processed file.