How can I make "Duplicate Page" less blank?

If I have a page with lots of stuff in it, including across the four-level Maps/Objects & Tokens/GM Info/Dynamic Highlights levels, I often want to make another page, with some subset of that data.  For example right now I have a bought page where I want to duplicate almost everything, but leave out the "1", "2", "3"... icons that show which area we're looking at.  So much work has gone into setting these up, it seems wrong to bring players into bare layouts and my own descriptions, but I don't want to hint them into what they're being shown. So up at the top I click on "Duplicate Page," but what that makes is a page that happens to have the same x/y size, but nothing in it.  I've tried going through the process of copying each level myself, but that creates a mess of partial copies... I must have missed something somewhere in the docs.  Point me in the right direction?

The "Duplicate Page" feature is really misnamed. It should be "Duplicate Page Setting" or somesuch. There is no easy way at the Free or Plus level. It's laborious copy and paste as you have discovered. At the Pro Level, there is a script that purports to make a true copy, but I can't vouch for it; I've never used it. At Pro, you could also use the Transmogrifier to move it into a new game, rename it there and then move it back as if it were a different page. Wish I had better news.

Glad that I have not screwed up somehow.  (Usually, I have screwed up somehow.) Alas, I'm not a Pro, I'm mid-level.  In general -- long time computer geek here -- I hate to just poke changes into some detailed page, whether I've made it or someone else has.  What if I make a change that causes trouble I didn't expect?  I'd much rather have some version of "0.1, 0.2, 1.0, 1.1, 1.2..." so that when I make a mistake, or try a change I don't like, I can go back.  I know this isn't a surprise to you ("Wish I had better news"), but if I'm not alone, is there some requests weight I can add my voice to? Thanks.

Michael J. said: ...is there some requests weight I can add my voice to? Thanks. There sure is :) It's a popular one as you can imagine!

Ziechael said: It's a popular one as you can imagine! Indeed!  Thanks for the hint, I've added myself to the pile there... Wow.  This seems basic.  Safety issue, people driving themselves crazy fixing simple mistakes, all that... I have to imagine something about the innards making this somehow difficult to do, but, 2+ years to address...? But I go on.  Back to it.

Absolute speculation here, but it could be an optimization issue. People already tend to build to the edges of performance. If it were easy to keep piling on large sections of data, there might be a lot more unmanageable campaigns to have to deal with. If you ever do make the plunge into Pro, the Transmogrifier allows you to shuffle off all unused stuff to a library game.

I feel like Nolan talked about making a real duplicate functionality in one of the recent round tables. You might look at the last few for potential hope.  One note for people using the Transmogrifier Duplication Method: there is a bug that will break your interaction with the API on pages duplicated that way. Any objects on the page will retain their "unique" ids, meaning they won't be unique anymore and the API won't be able to reference the right one. 

Ah, I forgot about that bug. I so rarely duplicate pages, just (true) archive and restore.

keithcurtis said: Absolute speculation here, but it could be an optimization issue. People already tend to build to the edges of performance. If it were easy to keep piling on large sections of data, there might be a lot more unmanageable campaigns to have to deal with. Yes this would add more bits, but... by perspective?  Some subset of us causing difficulty by watching our browsers slowly make copy after copy of one object?  While (I hope) OS-level processes take advantage of redundancy by compressing some of those duplicated bits? Say my guess about the low-level process is wrong; it is a wild guess.  Even so, perspective-wise?  How much time has been spent, over these 2+ years, hand-drawing copies of wild-shaped objects, either on the UI there (eesh) or remotely, by copying -- and copying, and copying, and fixing the booboos that didn't copy right... Forget the grief our Plus-level folks spend.  I'll still guess that the weight the system has to use, hauling back and forth 1's and 0's after something goes wrong and has to be done over again, would be reduced if there were some automated way of doing that.

Like I said, absolute speculation on my part. Kenton once explained to me in very general terms how data is stored. It quickly went over my head, but it was a lot more complex and interdependent that I had thought.