Pages, headers and sections

Page settings are in the Page tab of the inspector; the most common ones are also in the Format › Page menu.

Paper, margins and orientation

• Paper Size: A3, A4, A5, B5, US Letter, US Legal and Tabloid, or a custom size.
• Portrait or Landscape.
• Margins in the Paper and Margins section, in centimeters or inches (Settings › Page › Units).

For new documents, paper, orientation and margins are set in Settings › Page › New Documents. That’s also where you turn on the layout guides (the margins of the text area) and the column guides, which don’t print.

Headers and footers

Turn them on with Format › Page › Header and Footer, or with the checkboxes in the Page tab. Each one has three parts: left, center and right; with Three-Column Headers off there is a single full-width field.

• You type them right on the page: double-click in the top or bottom margin. Return, Esc or a click elsewhere closes the field; the change applies to every page.
• Page number and total are written as {page} and {pages} (with the Italian interface {pagina} and {pagine}, which also work in English): for example Page {page} of {pages}.
• Different first page and Different even pages give the first page and the even pages a header and footer of their own.
• The distance from the edge of the sheet is set in the Page tab; if you don’t choose one, the header sits halfway into the margin.

Fields can also go into the text with Insert › Field: Page Number, Page Count and Today’s Date (Updates).

Text columns

In the Text Columns section of the Page tab: number of columns, Space Between Columns and, with Equal Widths off, the width of each column. In Pageless view the text runs in a single column.

Sections

A section is a part of the document with its own paper, orientation, margins, columns, headers and page numbers.

• Insert › Section Break: the new section starts on a new page.
• Insert › Section Break on the Same Page: handy for going from one to two columns mid-page.

In the Section section of the Page tab, Starts chooses between On a New Page and On the Same Page. On the same page only the columns change: paper, margins and headers change from the next page. Breaks on an even or odd page in Word files are kept, but in Documenta they start on the next page.

When printing, the paper of the first page is used and pages of a different size are scaled to it; the PDF keeps them as they are.

Border, watermark, line numbers

• Page Border: sides, style, color, width and distance from the sheet or from the text; on every page, only the first, or all but the first. The border doesn’t move the text.
• Watermark (Format › Page › Watermark): a text, including a preset (DRAFT, CONFIDENTIAL, COPY, URGENT, DO NOT COPY), or an image.
• Line Numbers: every N lines, distance from the text, and restarting on each page or running on. Lines of text are counted, not table rows; they show on screen and in print.
• Automatic hyphenation, also in the Page tab.

Breaks

• Page Break: ⌘ ↩.
• Line Break: ⇧ ↩, a new line in the same paragraph.