If your page numbers are disappearing, it's time to revisit your headers.
Page numbers are valuable. Some would even say crucial. So when they go missing from a Final Draft script's PDF — and especially when they're so clearly visible in the file — it can grind publishing to a halt.
Cluttered Headers are the Issue
“Clean up your headers.”
When there are too many characters in a header, Final Draft expands the size of the header until it invisibly pushes elements off the page margins. The right-most aligned element, the page number, therefore becomes right-aligned somewhere off the page (not unlike a script coordinator waiting outside the writers' room for a piece of birthday cake fated to be completely eaten before the SC gets a slice).
The solution is elegant: clean up your headers. But that means more than just deleting blank space (and if you were using the space bar to separate content up there, shame on you).
Tab Stops
Have you noticed those black angular things on the scripts ruler?
Those are tab stops. In order: left aligned, centered, and right aligned. When you're done typing in one of those elements, hit the tab key to navigate to the next. By using tab stops (and not spaces) to separate elements in your header, you're letting Final Draft take as much space as it needs to fill out each of the above boxes without needing to respect the blank space reserved if you used the space bar.
In the above image, the Episode number is always 5 characters long and is left-aligned. Collated Revisions should take up at most 30 characters (eg: 3rd Goldenrod Pages 11.10.2022) and the page number and period should take up 8 (eg: 34A-35B.) Since the space between the two gray is 64 characters long, you should have plenty of room to place everything you need.
To put in a header, click the tab stop selector to cycle through to the tab stop style you need.
Then, click on the ruler where you'd like to place that tab stop. To remove a tab stop, click and drag it off the ruler.
No Solution is Perfect
It would be wonderful if this solution worked every time. However, your showrunners might insist on having more information, like the show name, living in the header (especially if your show is Dahmer - Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story). The best course of action in this situation is to abbreviate or leave out information where you can. Or in a worst-case scenario, make the unorthodox suggestion to move the page number to a different tab stop.
Don't Forget to Update Your Template
Header settings are difficult to recreate manually when you open a new file. If you've had to rearrange the information in the header, it may be time to use this script as the basis for a new template. After you've published this draft, make a copy of the file use it for the template foundation, then save and distro. Voila! Onto the next item in your publishing checklist.
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