The Merge Pages feature has now been released as a beta download. As the Help file will not be updated until the release version is made available in a few weeks, a full description follows.

The purpose of Merge Pages is, as the name suggests, to merge any number of PageFour Pages into a single Page. It can be accessed via the right click menu after you select a folder or Pages in a Notebook, or from the Tools menu. In the dialog that pops up, you have the option to change the order of the Pages, choose to exclude them from the merge, open them for viewing in the main PageFour window, and specify the name of the newly merged Page.

The dialog is very straight forward, but a few points are worth mentioning in detail:

1. No blank lines are inserted between the Pages - one is simply appended to the other. This means that if you wish one or two blank lines to appear between chapters, you should add them yourself to each Page before the merge. Options to insert extra elements such as blank lines may be added later, depending on feedback, but my feeling was that over-complicating the process at this stage would have been a mistake.
2. The Remove button only removes a Page from the list about to be merged. It does NOT delete the actual Page in PageFour.
3. The new Page created during the merge will be inserted into the same folder as the first Page in the merge list. The full location of the merged Page will always be shown on the dialog’s status bar prior to the merge being carried out.
4. The name of the new merged Page cannot be the same as a Page you are about to merge. For example, you cannot merge Chapter 1, 2, 3 etc. into “Chapter 1″. This is a protective measure to ensure you do not inadvertently overwrite your own Pages.
5. If a Page with the same name as the new merged Page already exists - from a previous merge, for example - you will be asked if you wish to overwrite this Page before the merge is carried out. If you choose “Yes”, the Page is overwritten, but a snapshot of the old Page is taken first. If you choose “No”, an incremented Page is created - for example “Merged Page(2)”, and the old Page remains as it was.
6. Once the merge is complete, the dialog will close automatically and the merged Page will be opened.
7. The Merge Dialog will default to always appear on top of other Windows. This option can be switched on or off by selecting the “View | Stay on top” menu.
8. Double clicking on any Page in the dialog will open that Page for viewing in PageFour. This should allow you to quickly identify the contents of a Page without closing the Merge Dialog.
9. Shortcut keys exist for most of the merge options. The Del key removes a Page from the list. Enter opens the selected Page. Ctrl + Up or Down moves a Page up or down in the list.

Comments on the new feature are, as always, welcome. Either leave a comment on this post, or contact me direct via the contact page.