Page Layout Control

A document that prints wrong is a document nobody uses. XPress lets you set the paper, the orientation and each margin independently, and save all of it into a template so you only decide once.

Where to set it

Layout belongs to a template. Press Templates at the top of the XPress page and open the Page section. Paper, orientation and margins sit together there with the live preview beside them, so you change a margin and watch the page move.

For a one-off change that should not affect the template, use Adjust for this export.

Paper size

Size	Millimetres	Good for
A4	210 × 297	The default nearly everywhere
Letter	216 × 279	North America
Legal	216 × 356	Long-form legal documents
A3	297 × 420	Wide tables, diagrams, architecture drawings
A5	148 × 210	Booklets, handouts and quick reference cards

Orientation

Portrait for anything text-led. Landscape when the content is wider than it is tall - tables with many columns, timelines, diagrams.

Landscape plus A3 is the widest canvas XPress offers. The Wide (landscape) starter gives you landscape with tight margins on A4 - switch its paper size to A3 when you need the extra width.

Margins

Top, right, bottom and left, each set on its own, in millimetres. Defaults are 15 mm top and bottom, 12 mm left and right.

Two things to keep in mind:

Headers, footers and page numbers print inside the margins. Tight margins leave them crowded against your content, and a logo comes out smaller. If you use them, keep 15-20 mm top and bottom. See Headers & Footers.
A wide table needs room, not margin. Tables always fit the page, and narrower left and right margins give their columns more of it.

Combinations worth stealing

For	Paper	Orientation	Margins
Standard internal document	A4	Portrait	20 mm all round
Printed and bound	A4	Portrait	25 mm, with 35 mm on the left for the gutter
Wide data tables	A3	Landscape	10 mm all round
Slide-style handout	A4	Landscape	15 mm all round

The size of your titles

A cover title that fills the page is right for a report and much too loud for meeting notes. Each template sets its own, so you are not choosing once for everything you ever export.

Three things carry a size of their own, and each takes a size, a weight and a line height:

	Where you see it
Cover title	The large title on a cover page
Page title	The heading at the top of every exported page
Contents heading	The word above your contents list

Leave a line height blank and it goes back to its default, which the empty field shows: 1.2 for the cover title and the page title, and Auto for the contents heading, which then takes the spacing of the text around it.

The preview shows every change as you make it - and if a title grows large enough to push a cover onto a second sheet, the preview says so rather than quietly showing you a page that fits.

Headings and text in your pages

Out of the box your pages keep Confluence’s own look, so they read the way their author wrote them. When a document has to look like your company’s, In your pages under Typography gives your pages a house style:

	What you can set
Body text	Size and line height of paragraphs and lists, in tables too unless the table style sets its own size
Heading 1, 2 and 3	Size, weight, one of your brand colours, and whether each starts on a new page
Tables	Header cells in a brand colour, every other row shaded, lines between rows or none, compact or roomy cells, text in the middle of its row, and the text size
Lists	The numbers of the first three levels (1, a, A, i, I) and the bullets (round, ring, square), in your brand accent if you like
Panels and code	Info, Note, Success, Warning and Error panels with a line down the left, colour without a frame or a frame without colour, all in your brand accent, with or without icons; code blocks on light grey or a shade of your accent, at their own text size

Every field starts empty, which means as Confluence has it, and only what you fill in changes. Start on a new page turns each Heading 1 into a chapter on a sheet of its own. A heading that opens its page stays under the page title, a heading right under another heading stays with it, and a heading inside a table cell or a layout column stays in its row. In two columns headings stay in their column. The typefaces come from Your Brand.

Tables in your colours

A table with its header in your brand colour and a light shade on every other row is a table a reader follows across the page without a ruler. Under Tables, pick the header colour and the header text follows on its own, white on a dark colour and dark on a light one. A cell its author coloured in Confluence keeps that colour, so a red Blocked still shouts. Page Properties tables take the same style, and on paper a long table still repeats its header row on every sheet.

Panels and code in your colours

Callouts are where a document says careful and good to know, and they can say it in your colours. Give every Info, Note, Success, Warning and Error panel a line down the left, a soft colour without a frame, or a frame without colour, and put them all in your brand accent if one colour per kind is more than your document needs. A panel in a colour its author picked keeps it. Code blocks take a light grey or a shade of your accent, and a text size of their own.

Body text columns sets a PDF’s text in two columns, the way an info sheet or a newsletter reads. Tables, code and panels still take the full width of the page, so nothing has to squeeze into half of it, and a picture in a paragraph fits its column. An HTML export keeps one column, because a screen scrolls.

Printing it double-sided

A document meant to be printed on both sides and bound needs its wide margin on the bound edge - which is the left of one page and the right of the next. Set it once and let it alternate.

Switch on Mirror the margins for double-sided printing and the two side margins stop being Left and Right. They become Inside and Outside: inside is the bound edge, outside is the one you hold. The inside margin swaps sides on every page, so the binding never eats a line of text.

Page 1 is the right-hand page of an open book, so it keeps the margins exactly as you set them; it is the backs of the sheets that move.

The header and footer move with the margin too. Whatever sits on the left or the right, words, your logo or the page number, trades sides on every other page, so a page number on the outer edge is always under the reader’s thumb. See Bound documents.

One layout per document

Whatever you choose applies to the whole export - every page, whether it is one page or two hundred. You cannot mix paper sizes or orientations inside a single file. If a document needs both, export the wide part separately.

Every page starts fresh

In PDF, each exported page begins on a new sheet, so a bulk export reads as a document with sections rather than one continuous run. Cover and contents pages get their own sheets too.

Many short pages read better as one run, a set of meeting notes or a glossary say. Switch off Each page starts on a new sheet under Typography and the pages follow one another, each title a little below the end of the page before. The cover and the contents page keep their own sheets, and a header or footer that names the page still starts each page on a new sheet, so the name it prints is the right one.

How much the contents lists

By default a contents page lists the pages you exported. For a long document that is a map of the covers, not of the contents.

How much the contents lists opens it up:

The exported pages - one line each. The default, and what every template did before.
Pages and their headings - each page’s own top-level headings underneath it.
Pages and two levels of headings - one level further in.

It stops there. A contents page that lists every fourth-level heading in a two-hundred-page export is an index, and nobody reads an index they did not ask for.

Your page’s first heading is listed whether you wrote it as Heading 1 or Heading 2, for the same reason the numbering treats them alike.

Every entry is a link, so a reader clicks straight to the section. In a PDF each entry also carries the number of the page it starts on, with a dotted line leading to it, so the document works just as well printed and stapled as it does on screen. Page numbers beside each entry turns them off when you would rather keep the plain list. An HTML export has no pages, and a template that numbers its pages in Roman numerals keeps the plain list too, so there the entries are links alone.

The contents page is called Table of Contents unless you call it something else: Contents page title takes the words your readers expect, Inhalt or Sommaire or What’s inside.

A page that carries Confluence’s own Table of Contents macro lists its headings again, right under the document’s contents page. Switch on Leave out the contents lists inside pages and the document keeps one contents page, yours.

Numbering the pictures

Switch on Number the pictures and every attached picture gets a caption beneath it - Figure 1, Figure 2 - running in order through the whole document.

If a picture has description text in Confluence, that becomes the caption: Figure 3. The request path. Without one it is just the number, which is still what a paragraph refers to when it says “see Figure 3”.

Word before the number writes the caption in your document’s language: Abbildung 3, Illustration 3, Exhibit 3.

Emoji are left alone. They arrive as pictures too, and a document whose smileys are captioned Figure 4 is not a document.

Numbering the sections

A document people cite in a meeting is a document with numbers in it. “It’s in 4.2” is a sentence somebody can act on; “it’s in the bit about retention, further down” is not.

Switch on Number the headings and each exported page becomes a numbered section, with its own headings numbered beneath it:

1. Release Notes 4.2
   1.1 Highlights
   1.2 Compatibility
2. Architecture Overview
   2.1 Request path
       2.1.1 Validation

The numbers run through the whole document, so section 2 follows section 1 no matter how many sheets the first one took.

Your page’s first heading gets one number, whether you wrote it as Heading 1 or Heading 2. Confluence keeps a page’s title outside its body, so people use one or the other for their top level and it would be unhelpful to punish the choice - either way, your first heading is 1.1 rather than 1.1.1. Three levels of numbering, then it stops; a fourth number tells a reader nothing they did not already know from the indentation.

Numbering works in HTML exports too.

Numbers in your house style

A handbook reads in chapters, a contract in sections, and the numbers can say so. Under Number the headings, choose for each level (the page titles, Heading 1 and 2, Heading 3) how it counts: 1, 2, 3, I, II, III, i, ii, iii, A, B, C, a, b, c, or no number at all. Add words before and after the number, and pick whether a heading shows the levels above it or only its own number:

Chapter I: Release Notes 4.2
   I.1 Highlights
       I.1.a) Upgrades
Chapter II: Architecture Overview
   II.1 Request path

The contents page numbers its entries the same way, so Chapter II in the contents is Chapter II on the page. The designer shows an example line as you type, and the preview follows along.

Finding your way around a long one

Every PDF opens with a bookmark pane: each exported page is an entry, and its own headings sit nested underneath. Two hundred pages becomes something you move around in rather than scroll through, and it works in every PDF reader worth the name.

There is nothing to switch on, and nothing appears on the printed page - bookmarks live in the reader, not on the paper.

Your Brand - the logo, colours and typefaces every template inherits.
Headers & Footers - what goes in those margins.
Export Templates - save a layout and reuse it.