How to move page numbers to centre bottom for printing?

How can I change the page numbers to centre bottom, instead of outside corners?
When I “publish” in Bloom and select “actual size” to print, the right-hand outside-corner numbers print out OK on my Canon printer. But on my HP they get cut off if I select “acual size”; and if I select “shrink” or “fit”, the whole thing moves to the left and the gutter is wrongly positioned. I just want to be sure that whoever receives the file will be able to print it with the page numbers.

Hi Jillian,

I just want to be sure that whoever receives the file will be able to print it with the page numbers.

The problem you are having with that printer is something I have not seen in Bloom’s life of 6 years. Bloom creates PDFs, and PDFs print correctly, unless printer settings are messed up. So it’s unlikely that whoever you are sending the file to will have the same problem. Maybe someone on the list here will have an idea for you on how to fix the printer settings?

If you really have to move the page number, look in the collection folder. You will see a file named “customCollectionsStyles.css”. Open that in notepad.exe, and paste the following at the end:

    .A5Portrait.numberedPage.side-left::after{
        left:254px;
    }
    .A5Portrait.numberedPage.side-right::after{
        right:254px;
    }

Thank you. I have left that HP printer in Gambia for people to receive copies of masters for printing and checking, once I have adjusted the pictures. So it will be a big help if I can move the page numbers to a position which will be sure to print correctly for them. But I’ll ask my University ISS helpdesk to deal with it for me!

I was doing a bit of Bloom training, and noticed that the page numbers were centered on my documents, but not on those of the participants. Many of them had older versions of Bloom, so I thought maybe there had been an update to the “global” style setup (assuming such a thing exists). But at least one user had the same version as me (4.3.4), and was still getting page numbers on the outsides of the pages. Jenni pointed me to this page, and sure enough at some point in the past I apparently had added these lines to the CSS file in one of my collections. However, I have another collection that does NOT have these lines in its CSS, but the page numbers for books in that collection are still centered. Why would that be? Actually I notice now that SOME books in that collection are not centered, but others are. And I don’t see anything in any CSS files (in individual books, or at the level of collections) that would explain this difference. Can someone maybe share some more technical details as to how things are set up? E.g. is there a “master” CSS somewhere, that the customCollectionStyles.css overrides? What are possibilities for styles that might affect page number centering, and would make the settings different in different books in the same collection?

As a greenhorn in Bloom, I asked last year about how to centre page numbers. My problem was that page numbers on the right hand page were somehow missing the printer. They were on screen but not on the pdf. But advisers on Bloom could not at the time tell me how to centre the numbers.

I would love to know how to do this!

  • Jill Karlik

Well, using the instructions above (given by John Hatton) seems to work for me, at least in the one collection. I.e. when I add these lines to the end of the customCollectionsStyles.css file in the collection folder:

.A5Portrait.numberedPage.side-left::after{
    left:254px;
}
.A5Portrait.numberedPage.side-right::after{
    right:254px;
}

then the page numbers for books in that collection are centered, and if I remove those lines, the page numbers are on the outsides of the pages. So I would give that a try (see more details above, and talk to a computer person if you need help modifying the CSS file).

But my difficulty is that I have another collection where these lines are NOT present, and some of the books have centered page numbers, and others don’t. So there is some other issue at play here.

@jheath Go to the book with the unexpected behavior, do Help:Report a Problem, let it send the book to us, and we’ll check it out.

OK. Will ve getting back into those books in a couple of weeks and will do it then. Thank you.

OK, I’ve submitted a problem report (from within Bloom) for the book that has centered page numbers, but does not have the lines above in the CSS file.