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Hidden headers and footers

Used and unused (hidden) headers or footers

Any Atlantis document always includes at least one section. This is part of the default settings, and is set up even if you never inserted a section break yourself.

Now if you create headers or footers in a document, they automatically become a property of the corresponding section.

All pages of a document section usually display the same header and footer, if any. But in some cases, you might want to have a different header or footer on the first page of a section. Or at times you might want to have different headers or footers on a section odd and even pages.

The simplest way to control how many different headers or footers are displayed in a given section is through the Layout tab of the Page | Settings... dialog:

Page settings

If you activate the Different odd and even option in this dialog, you will be able to use a different header and footer on odd and even pages of the current section (or in the whole document if you choose to apply the settings to the whole document).

If you activate the Different first page option, you will be able to use a different header and footer on the first page of the current section (or in the whole document if you choose to apply the settings to the whole document).

So if you activate both these options in the above Page settings > Layout dialog, the corresponding document section(s) might each display up to 3 different headers and footers:

   - a First Page header, an Odd Page header, an Even Page header,

   - a First Page footer, an Odd Page footer, an Even Page footer.

Obviously all 3 headers and 3 footers can be displayed only when the corresponding section has at least 3 pages.

So each document section can use 3 different headers and footers. These headers and footers are internally stored as a property of the corresponding document section. They are saved when you save the document. They are reloaded whenever you reopen the document.

Now there will be cases when not all headers and footers of a section are displayed in the document window.

If 3 different headers and footers have been assigned to a section, and the section has only one page, only the header and footer meant for the first page is displayed. But note that internally the section would still have 3 different headers and 3 different footers. These would be displayed if you added more pages to the section.

In the same way, headers and footers are not lost when you delete pages from a section. They might simply not be displayed any more because of the lack of corresponding pages in the section.

You could also attach 3 different headers and footers to a section, but leave the Different odd and even and Different first page options deactivated in the Page settings > Layout dialog. In this case, the same Odd Page header and footer is displayed on all the pages of the corresponding document section. The other headers and footers are not lost, they are simply not displayed because they have been deactivated. But they remain a property of the corresponding document section.

Dealing with hidden headers and footers

In most cases, it won't be a problem if not all available headers and footers are displayed in a document. But such "hidden" headers and footers might be undesirable at times.

First, there is no sense in having hidden headers and footers in the final version of a document. Such hidden headers or footers might significantly affect the size of the document file if they include pictures.

Also hidden headers and footers might include confidential information (e.g. your name, postal address, or phone number). You should not assume that this confidential information is safe from prying eyes simply because these hidden headers and footers do not display in the document window. Most people will not find it a problem to retrieve this kind of information from a document.

So we recommend that you remain in control of the hidden elements in your documents. For this, Atlantis gives you a comprehensive set of tools to monitor all the section properties of a document. These tools are found under the Sections panel of the Atlantis Control Board The Control Board is a component of the Atlantis GUI that brings together various tools and commands for document design. It is a set of panels each of which deals with one specific characteristic of the active document:

Control Board

Learn more...
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The Atlantis Control Board displays with

  • the corresponding hot key (F6),
  • toolbar button Button image,
  • or View | Control Board menu The main menu or simply menu is a horizontal bar with clickable commands anchored to the top of the main window of Atlantis:

    Main menu
    command.

The Sections panel is displayed by clicking the third button from the left on the top toolbar of the Control Board:

Sections panel

All the document sections are listed in the Sections box of the Sections panel:

Sections panel

The Section properties box deals with the settings of the section highlighted in the Sections box above. There are 5 categories of section properties:

Sections panel

The Headers and Footers properties are displayed by clicking the "+" sign left of the Headers/Footers item:

Sections panel

In most newly-created documents, these will look in the following way:

Sections panel

The various captions clearly indicate that the document doesn't have any headers or footers at all ("No own Odd Page header", etc).

Now here are the section properties of a document with a single First Page header:

Sections panel

In this example, the corresponding header is not actually displayed in the document window, as indicated by the note underneath the caption:

Sections panel

The header is not displayed because the Different first page option is unchecked in the Page settings > Layout dialog. You can see that the option is deactivated directly in the Control Board Sections panel; the corresponding check box is unchecked in the Section properties:

Sections panel

Here is how to find the headers and footers which are not currently displayed on any of a document pages:

  1. Show the Atlantis Control Board (F6) and its Sections panel as explained above if they are not currently displaying.
  2. Highlight (click) the first section in the Sections box:
    Sections panel
  3. Check if headers and footers are available in the section. If it owns an unused header or footer, its description includes a special note:
    Sections panel
    In other words, this section header is currently hidden. However, its contents can be viewed in a separate window ("View/Edit" command). If it doesn't contain any useful information, or if you are not planning to use this header or footer in the future, you can delete it using the corresponding command link in the Control Board panel:
    Sections panel
  4. Highlight (select) each new section in the Sections box, and proceed in the same way as in step 3 above for all the document sections.

See also...