Box shape "moves" when pasted to another page

[JLSchweitzer]

I am creating a grade sheet for my students. To help the instructors when it comes to grading, I have decided to have a picture of each of the students. There are 4 pages for each student and there are 102 students. Thus my document would be 408 pages long. I would like to have the picture of the student on each of the 4 pages. Since I will be dragging and dropping the picture of the student, I wanted to have a box with borders that would help in sizing the picture as well as standardizing the size of the picture.

So I created the one page document with the box shape in the upper right hand corner. I simply copied the one page and then pasted it at the end of the first page. I continued doing this. However, I noticed that after some pastes, the box shape was in the same position and in other instances, the box shaped moved to the right. I went back made sure that I didn't enter a page break in one case and not the other, etc. I'm sure it's some hidden formatting that is causing the box to shift but can't seem to figure out what.

Since, as I said above, this is a really long document, I don't want to have to manually change the location of each box over 400 times. I'm sure someone will suggest that I leave the box in the "shifted position" but it seems that sometimes the box stays in the correct position as shown below (first picture) and other times, it shifts. Any hints or suggestions???

Box in correct position.jpg (98.28 KiB) Viewed 10994 times

Box moved

Box moved to right.jpg (91.98 KiB) Viewed 10994 times

[xiamenese]

How about putting the box in as a watermark? That would remain the same shape and size and give you the target for sizing and placing the photo? I guess it would entail more work in placing the photo each time, but it wouldn't be moving.

Are you going to have all 102 students … 408 pages in one file? If you gave each student a separate file, then you could just make a template of four pages.

Otherwise, this seems to me to be more of a job for a database ... Filemaker, or perhaps Bento ... Or you could do it in Numbers, I imagine.

Mark

[JLSchweitzer]

Mark:

Would have never, ever thought of using a watermark. That's a great suggestion.

Are you going to have all 102 students … 408 pages in one file? If you gave each student a separate file, then you could just make a template of four pages.

Otherwise, this seems to me to be more of a job for a database ... Filemaker, or perhaps Bento ... Or you could do it in Numbers, I imagine.

Mark

Yeah I know it would be a huge file. The 103 students are divided into twelve groups. My plan is to print out these "grade sheets," and then put them in a three-ring binder according to the twelve groups.

I haven't really used a database but maybe it's worth a shot if it would simply this.

Thanks for chiming in.

[phspaelti]

I am just wondering something.
Do I understand correctly that the two pictures are taken from the same file? Why does it look like the right margin is different? (I am judging by the visible "white" space.) Judging by this "margin" the frame's space is about the same from the right edge, so I suspect the placement for that item is being determined from the right, unlike the rest. But maybe I am completely off-base.
Still you might consider posting a sample.

[martin]

Another thing to check is whether you have any section breaks (and thus perhaps different page margins), or the "facing pages" section option turned on.

If you're still struggling with this, posting (or privately sending) a sample showing two pages with the different placements would be helpful.

[JLSchweitzer]

I am just wondering something.
Do I understand correctly that the two pictures are taken from the same file? Why does it look like the right margin is different? (I am judging by the visible "white" space.) Judging by this "margin" the frame's space is about the same from the right edge, so I suspect the placement for that item is being determined from the right, unlike the rest. But maybe I am completely off-base.
Still you might consider posting a sample.

I wish it were that simple. In actuality, I didn't want to have two huge files so when I took the screen capture on the first picture, I didn't go as far to the right as I did in the second screen capture.

[JLSchweitzer]

Another thing to check is whether you have any section breaks (and thus perhaps different page margins), or the "facing pages" section option turned on.

If you're still struggling with this, posting (or privately sending) a sample showing two pages with the different placements would be helpful.

Martin:

I have sent two files via the Nisus Feedback. BTW, I checked and there shouldn't be any section breaks, nor was facing pages turned on. Just now I wondered if the padding around the box was responsible but that didn't pan out.

[phspaelti]

I just tried recreating something like what you have, and in my test I can confirm the problem. As I tried repeatedly pasting the "same" page, I got alternate placement of the floating box, once at the margin, once ten points over the margin, back and forth. This looks like a bug to me, but maybe Martin can clarify.

One way I found around this is to use the placement "Moves with paragrah" for the floating object. This did not have the same problem.

If the problem persists it might be possible to write a macro to fix the placement.

[phspaelti]

After some more testing I am now convinced that this is a bug. It seems to be related to NWP's "normal" paste behavior. If one selects a single graphic element, and then pastes it, the item is pasted shifted down and right by 10 pts each. Apparently this behavior "survives" even though the block to be pasted includes other things in addition to the graphic element. This seems to happen only if the item has the placement "Position on Page of ¶".

I tried copying two pages at a time. This will paste the first one correctly, but the second one is shifted down+right by 10 pts. Repeated pasting after that will give alternately two positioned correctly, two shifted, etc.

Copying 3 pages at a time continues the pattern. First paste: first page is correct, second and third shifted. Repeated paste: 3 pages ok, 3 pages shifted, and so on.

If the graphic has placement "Moves with paragraph" everthing copies and pastes without problem.

[martin]

Thanks for your help everyone, this is indeed a bug. We'll file it and work on getting it fixed.

In the meantime, there are a few workarounds:
1. Switch to Draft View when you do the pasting. Switching back to Page View afterwards will not trigger the bug.
2. As Philip mentioned, one can use the "Moves with paragraph" placement option instead of fixed on page.