hi Ann-Marie, thank you yes that is a great idea. Here is the dialog box i was talking about. As a recap, when I insert pages they come in at a different size (not sure what) causing master page items to fall of the page. When I click on ‘Apply master to pages’ from the pages palette this is the dialog box that appears:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/103573029@N03/

when I click on ‘use master page size’ everything falls into place, but the thing is this keeps happening every time I add a page, and I have not defined a different page size anywhere, or have I?

If anyone knows whats going on please let me know because this is getting disruptive and mysterious.

here’s another screenshot: I clicked on one of those pages that is off, clicked on the custom page icon on the pages palette and it shows me that one of those problem pages is indeed set at tabloid (as it should be) yet it still follows the problem explained above: https://www.flickr.com/photos/103573029@N03/9985658853/