Page Layouts and Condition Tags

Recently, I was tasked with creating a set of procedure docs in PDF. I was excited because I had convinced my employer to skip Word altogether and allow me to build the docs in Flare. Yeah me!

One of the major tasks I had was to create a page layout that would be the same look and feel across the whole set of docs. So, instead of creating nine page layouts, all identical except for a few elements, I chose to create one page layout and used conditional tags to show different info.

Create Condition Tags

First I created a set of condition tags, one for each target/document. I used the Default set and just added to it, but you can certainly create a whole new set if you’d like. Here’s what the list looked like when I was done:

Make Targets

Then I created one target for each PDF document. As I created them, I made sure to assign the correct condition tag by setting it to Include. Once this was done, all my targets appeared in the Targets folder, each with its own condition tag assigned and showing.

This sets the stage for the page layouts.

Create Page Layout

Next I created one page layout – just one called QA_docs.flpgl. This is where all the magic happened. I added a decoration frame to add the logo. The header, body, and footer frames were already there.

When I began editing the header frame, it became more of an evolution instead of POOF, it’s done. Each header had the following elements:

• Title
• Procedure Number
• Version
• Revision Date
• Doc Number
• Approved By

I created conditional tags for the title. I added all the titles and assigned the correct condition tags. I did the same for each element, hard-coding as much info as possible. For example, each doc number started with AAIS_PRO_ so that was left out of content in the condition tags. Same for Procedure Number.

I completed all the elements for this first page header…and went to the second page header. The only difference was the lack of the logo. So I just copied the table over to the header frame and didn’t add a decoration frame.

Here’s what the page layout looks like in the Editor:

Not exactly attractive – but this isn’t where the magic appears…you need to view an output to see the results.

Build Output

Here is a header in PDF created from the page layout.

Sure, it’s not the most beautiful thing ever – but it’s exactly what they wanted…and I don’t have to maintain 9 page layouts. Just one.