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.

PDF only

Paper size, orientation and margins describe a printed page. An HTML export is a web document with no paper, so these settings do not apply to it.

Where to set it

Layout belongs to a template. Open the export settings, choose Manage → Templates, and the paper controls sit near the top with a live preview beside them - 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

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. If you use them, keep 15-20 mm top and bottom - see Headers & Footers.
• A wide table needs room, not margin. If tables overflow, cutting the left and right margins buys real width.

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 keeps whatever spacing it already had, which is usually what you want for a single-line heading.

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.

Your pages keep their own look

This sets the titles XPress puts on the document: the cover, the contents page and each page’s heading. The pages themselves keep Confluence’s typography, so your headings, tables, code blocks and panels come out reading the way their author wrote them - which is almost always what you want from an export. Set the typefaces they are all rendered in under Your Brand.

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 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 page number moves with the margin. On a bound document it belongs on the outer edge, which is the right of one page and the left of the next, and that is where it goes - so a reader thumbing the block always finds it under their thumb.

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.

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. There are no page numbers beside them: a contents page is built before the document is paginated, so nothing knows yet which sheet a heading will land on. The section numbers are what carry you on paper.

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”.

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.

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.

Next

• 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.