Help needed with custom master page

Dorico
#1

I am trying to assign a custom master page to a few blank pages but without success.

I have inserted a few blank pages in a vocal part layout.
Directly after inserting them, these pages show in the pages panel a red page override symbol top left.

I would like to add three tokens on each of these pages: “projectTitle”, “page” and “projectCopyright”.
I think that the best way to achieve this is to create a custom master page and assign it to the blank pages.

I create a new master page based on Default and from type “Custom” and name it “Empty Page”.
I edit this master page so that there are only three text frames with the three tokens.

I then right click on one of these blank pages to insert a Master Page Change.
In “Use master page” I choose the new created Master Page “Empty Page”
In “Range” I choose “Current Page Only”

After doing this I can see in the Pages Panel that the blank page shows the symbol for a Master Page Change (a green top line).
It seems then that the Master Page Change has been succesfully applied.
But the page stays completely blank and the tokens do not appear.

What am I doing wrong?

#2

Off the top of my head I’m not sure how you’d go about doing this, because you can’t apply a master page to a page that already has overrides. You need to remove the existing overrides first.

It might be quickest to add the three text boxes to one of the blank pages, then multi select the frames and right-click the other blank pages and go “copy frames to selected pages”.

If I was actually in front of Dorico I might be able to come up with something better, but I’m not…

#3

I know that is the intuitive thing to do. But, don’t use the Insert Page function. That always creates a page override. Overridden pages will not reflect any edits to the Master Page.

Instead, use the Insert Master Page Change function. This will also create a new page but without the page override.

#4

Ah, I was not aware of this!
Thanks for this information.

Could you explain this a little bit more?
When I insert a Master Page Change no additional page is created.

Thanks for this suggestion.
This is indeed a good solution.
Nevertherless I would be interested to know if it can work with a custom master page.

#5

Ah, I guess I have found out how Craig F suggestion works!

  1. Create the custom Master Page whereby it seems important that this page is based on (None) otherwise it seems that any edit in this page also edits the origin master page!
  2. Select the page where you want to insert a blank page, choose Insert a Master Page Change, use the new created Custom Master Page, choose Current Page Only - It works :slight_smile:
#6

You’re right, that’s the way :wink:

#7

A very similar problem:
One layout (about forty page) containing multiple flows, and every page has a custom appearance with page overrides.
Then of necessity I used “Insert page” in three separate places. Perhaps this was a mistake but it seemed the right intuitive thing to do at the time. After that the left-right page layout is screwed up; some righthand pages use the lefthand master page and vice versa.
I’m out of my depth here :frowning: How can I reset page layout so that lefthand pages use lefthand master &tc ?

#8

You can reset by right-clicking any overridden page (in the top right panel of Engrave mode) and going “Remove Page Override(s)”, but if you do that you’ll lose ALL the overrides from that page. Are the page overrides still linked to the correct music? If not, you might experiment with the (again, right-clicking on a page) “Swap with previous/next” and “Move Pages” functions.

If, in fact, the only thing that’s wrong is that the page numbers are on the wrong sides, just shift the frames manually. It’s a pain in the backside but it shouldn’t take you more than 20 minutes to do 40 pages.
It’s just a case of

  1. Grabbing the frame
  2. Switching the lock from left to right (or right to left)
  3. Setting the distance from the lock to 0 (or wherever you want it).

I think I actually set up an AutoHotKey macro to do steps 2 and 3 automatically some months ago, but that’s Windows so wouldn’t be much help to you.

#9

Thanks for the above suggestion, of moving frames containing page numbers back and forth.
Elegant it isn’t but it gets the job done without having to redo the layout of many complex pages.
Thanx. :slight_smile:

#10

There was a pretty screenshot with the numbers on it that I somehow forgot to actually post. Oh well - looks like you got the point regardless.

#11

pianoleo: Was just reading your discussion ‘How do I remove a page in the middle of a score?’ from 2017.
I was slightly comforted though not surprised to discover that I was not the first or the only person to get bogged down in this area …

#12

I’ve learnt my lesson :wink: