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I have a random blank page before a new appendix chapter in my document and have tried everything online to no avail.

Here is my class setup:

\documentclass[11pt,openright,a4paper,draft]{report}

and here is where the blank page is appearing:

\section{Adding an Item to a Room}

\begin{enumerate}
\item
Access the Admin Panel.
\item
Click on \textit{Room Management}.
\item
Select the specified entry from the list.
\item
Click \textit{Add Item to Room}.
\item
Select the \textit{Item} from the list.
\item
Click \textit{Link}.
\end{enumerate}

%%% BLANK PAGE IS HERE %%%

\chapter{Raw Results Output}\label{app:Raw Results}

\section{Testing}

\subsection{Application Monitoring}\label{sec: Load Testing Evidence}

\begin{minipage}{\linewidth}
\begin{center}
\label{fig:Application Monitoring Evidence}
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth,height=\textheight,keepaspectratio]{website-stress.jpg}
\captionsetup{justification=centering}
\captionof{figure}{Evidence of monitoring the web-application.}
\end{center}
\end{minipage}

Any help is greatly appreciated.

James
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    You are using openright, which means a \chapter will be on the right (or recto, typically odd numbered) side of a two-side layout. The assumption is that your previous section ends on an odd page, implying that TeX has to clear past an even page to get to an odd page which will open on the right. Could you clarify this information, since it's not possible to identify that from your code snippet. – Werner May 01 '17 at 19:07
  • The page finishes on number 99, the blank page appears on 100 and then the new appendix chapter is on 101. It hasn't happened anywhere else and I'm pretty sure I've got a mixture of chapters ending on even and odd pages? I will be printing it one sided as well. – James May 01 '17 at 19:15
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    Your "pretty sure"... you're the only one who would know, since we can't replicate the problem with your code snippet. Are you using any other layout packages, perhaps geometry and specifying the twoside option? – Werner May 01 '17 at 19:23
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    @Werner apologies. My first appendix chapter starts on even (82) and all the others do in fact start on odd, is the first chapter some sort of exception? I also have checked the standard chapters and they also occur on both even and odd pages with no blank pages. As the document is about 200 pages long I didn't think it would be appropriate to post it all. I also tried filling the offending page with bogus content so the new appendix chapter would start on odd (101), but it still remains blank and the new chapter gets pushed to 102. – James May 01 '17 at 19:29
  • What happens when you remove the oversized image that you post on the first page of this chapter? Does the blank page go away? – Werner May 01 '17 at 19:31
  • @Werner yes, the blank page has gone now I removed the image? – James May 01 '17 at 19:35
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    @James Try to make the image smaller. If you fill the whole textheight with it, there is not enough room left for the caption and the titles from chapter/section/subsection – samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz May 01 '17 at 19:46
  • you have specified that chapters start on odd pages so a blank page will be created if the chapter would otherwise start on an even page. – David Carlisle May 01 '17 at 19:47
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    do you intend that image to come under your Application Monitoring heading? If so the height should be less than \textwidth so you should reduce the height here height=\textheight – David Carlisle May 01 '17 at 19:49
  • Thanks for everyone's help. I've reduced the size of the image and now the blank page has gone! – James May 01 '17 at 19:51

1 Answers1

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Your appendix chapter has no breakable content on the first page, and therefore flushes to a subsequent page. By default, TeX ties a sectional heading (\chapter, \section, \subsection, ...) with whatever follows it in order to avoid a sectional heading being orphaned at the bottom of a page.

In your case, this means the \chapter heading is tied to the \section which, in turn, is tied to the \subsection which, in turn is tied to a large unbreakable minipage. Since none of these fit on the page as a whole, it is necessarily flushed to the following page, leaving a blank one behind. You'll notice this behaviour by looking at the .log and identifying the place where there's an overfull \vbox warning around page 100.

Solution: Introduce some breakable content (like paragraph text, or a list), or shrink the size of your image so that it will fit on the page together with all the other sectional headings.

Werner
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