Setup Wizard · Step 1 of 4 · 3 min read · Beginner friendly

Tell Markup R-XP which pages of your imported PDF make up the actual cross-stitch chart - the grid pages you'll be stitching from. Anything you leave out is hidden from every later step.

On this page

📋 What this step is for

Most cross-stitch PDFs contain more than just the chart itself - a title page, a thread list, instructions, a finished-picture preview, sometimes a back-stitch layer on its own page. Markup R-XP only needs the grid pages to build your project, so the very first thing the setup wizard asks is which pages those are.

Anything you exclude here is hidden from every later step, so don't worry about cluttering the rest of the wizard with pages you don't care about. Your selection is saved straight away - if you come back later (for instance to add a page you missed) the wizard remembers exactly which pages you'd chosen.

👁️ The screen at a glance

The Select Chart Pages step: a grid of thumbnail pages, some highlighted green, with a floating selection chip on the left edge and a Next button bottom-right.
Figure 1. Five things on this screen: (1) the header bar shows how many pages you've selected and reminds you that you can double-tap to enlarge; (2) selected pages have a green tint and a green title strip; (3) unselected pages have a plain grey title strip; (4) the floating chip on the left edge has bulk-selection shortcuts; (5) the Next button bottom-right takes you to the next step.

📄 Reading a page tile

Close-up of one selected page tile, with the PDF page number, page size in brackets, and thumbnail labelled.
Figure 2. Each tile represents one page of your original PDF. (1) The PDF page number, always shown. (2) The page size, such as (A4) or (Letter) - this only appears on included pages. (3) The thumbnail image of the page. (4) A green tint and a thicker green border mean the page is currently included.

✋ Including and excluding pages

  1. Tap to toggle. A single tap on any page includes it - it turns green. Tap again and it goes back to grey, excluded.
  2. Watch the header. The strip at the top of the list updates immediately: “3 of 8 selected”. That's your running total.
  3. Repeat until only the grid pages are green. Title pages, thread lists and previews should stay grey.

💡 Tip. Not sure whether a page is a chart page? Double-tap it to preview full-screen first - that doesn't change its include state, so you can still toggle it after.

ℹ️ Note. Excluding a page doesn't delete anything from your PDF. It only tells the rest of the wizard to ignore it. You can come back at any time and include it again.

⚡ Bulk selection: the floating chip

The chip floats on the left edge of the page list and gives you three one-tap shortcuts for selecting many pages at once.

The floating chip on the left edge of the screen with three round buttons stacked vertically.
Figure 3. The chip's three buttons, top to bottom: Select All, Select None, Invert Selection.

➕ Select All

Includes every page in the PDF. Use this when most of your PDF is grid pages and you only need to deselect a couple of non-chart pages afterwards.

➖ Select None

Clears your entire selection in one tap. Useful if you've been clicking around and want a clean slate to start over.

🔄 Invert Selection

Flips every page. Anything that was included becomes excluded and vice versa - perfect when you've selected the non-chart pages by accident.

🔍 Previewing a page full-screen

The thumbnails are small enough that it's not always obvious whether a page is the chart, the key, a colour preview, or instructions. Open any page full-screen to take a closer look.

  1. Double-tap any page tile. The page opens full-screen.
  2. Pinch and pan to inspect the grid or text more closely.
  3. Tap the back arrow in the top-right corner to return to the page list. Your include or exclude state for that page is unchanged.
A single PDF page filling the screen with a back-arrow button in the top-right corner.
Figure 4. The full-screen preview. (1) The back-arrow button returns you to the page list.

➡️ Moving to the next step

When you're happy with your selection, tap Next in the bottom-right corner. Markup R-XP will save your chart pages and take you on to the key-pages step.

⚠️ Heads up. You must include at least one page before you can move on. If you tap Next with nothing selected you'll see a “No chart pages selected” message and stay on this step.

A dialog reading 'No chart pages selected. Please select at least one page to continue.'
Figure 5. The warning shown when Next is tapped with no pages included.

❓ Tips and common questions

The page list looks too cramped or too sparse - can I change how many columns are shown?
The layout adapts automatically to your device. Phones show 2 columns in portrait and 4 in landscape; tablets and desktops show 4 in portrait and 6 in landscape. Rotate the device or resize the window for a different layout.
I selected all my pages by accident. Do I have to deselect them one at a time?
No - tap Select None in the floating chip on the left to clear the whole selection in one go.
What if my PDF only has one page?
You still need to tap it once to include it. Markup R-XP is happy with single-page charts - you just won't have separate key or picture pages to worry about later.
If I come back to this step later, will my changes wipe everything I'd done?
Only the parts that depend on which chart pages exist will be refreshed. Adding or removing pages re-evaluates the chart layout, but the symbol setup and colour choices you've already made are preserved where possible.
One of my pages looks like a chart but doesn't have a grid - should I include it?
No. Markup R-XP looks for a printed grid on every included page so it can line things up. Pages without a grid (such as a coloured preview of the finished piece) belong in the picture-pages step instead - you'll get to that shortly.
The thumbnails are blank or very slow to appear - is something broken?
The first time you open a project, Markup R-XP rasterises every page in the PDF so it has thumbnails to show you. On a large PDF this can take a few seconds and you'll see a loading indicator with the message “Loading grid pages”. Once it's done the thumbnails are cached and will appear instantly next time.

➡️ What's next?

When you tap Next, you'll move on to Selecting your key pages. The key page is the one that lists every symbol and the thread colour it represents - it's how Markup R-XP learns what each symbol on your chart actually is.