Need to create a document for a magasine editor

[Soleil]

Hi,


I work for a magazine and the Editor asked me to create a document that will
allow to keep the centre pages in the centre automatically no matter how many
pages the magazine will have. I work with MS Office 2003. How can I create
such document? I need something that will automatically detect the number of
pages and pick the 2 middle one for the centre-fold. I have tried just about
everything and running out of ideas and patience. Can someone help with this?

Thanks very much,

 

[Robert M. Franz (RMF)]

Hello Soleil

I work for a magazine and the Editor asked me to create a document that will
allow to keep the centre pages in the centre automatically no matter how many
pages the magazine will have. I work with MS Office 2003. How can I create
such document? I need something that will automatically detect the number of
pages and pick the 2 middle one for the centre-fold. I have tried just about
everything and running out of ideas and patience. Can someone help with this?

hmm, this seems to be a "problem of 4", right?

1. If you have a document 1 page in length, you need an empty page
before page 1. If it's 2 pages in length, the same.

2. If it's 3 or 4 pages in length, you don't need an empty page.

3. If it's 5 or 6 pages in length, see 1.

4. If it's 7 or 8 pages in length, see 2.

Correct so far?

I *think* that this could be taken care of by a clever IF field
(positioned at the start of the document.

The field checks whether "NUMPAGES modulo 4" (=the remainder of a
division of the amount of pages by 4) is 1 or 2, and inserts a hard page
break (or something suitably small and either invisible/white or a dummy
text like "this page intentionally left blank").

I don't have the brains to crunch this one out at the moment (something
with subtracting a formatted numpage/4 of an unformatted numpage/4 and
comparing it, maybe). If you can verify my assumptions above, I (or
better somebody else ) might be able to solve this.

2¢
Robert