Episode 33: Long Documents, Part 1 - Book Basics (VIDEO)
After a long wait, here’s a long episode about working with long documents in InDesign. This first installment in a five-part series covers the the Book palette and how to use it to manage, update and output multiple files that make up a single book. Thrown in for good measure are a few quick methods for using section markers and Find/Change to quickly modify chapter numbers and names on title pages and folios.
Watch the episode here (19:45 | 39. MB), or you can subscribe via iTunes.
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April 3rd, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Michael,
After watching these very detailed instructional Podcasts and seeing some of your other production techniques live at the NYC IDUG meetings at FIT… I finally tried it out.
Success!!!
Granted I didn’t try it out professionally yet haha. I used a project that I’m working on with a friend as a trial run. It worked seamlessly!
We produced a very copyright infringing booklet of Pearl Jam lyrics.
- We started out by primping and finessing MS Word Documents to have the styles match up verbatim with InDesign styles.
- Then, instead of simply placing the files, we used the import options to map styles.
- We made a MS Word doc for each chapter.
- Imported them separately, making each Word doc its own InDesign file (chapter.
- Then simply crated a new book and imported all the chapters.
Now we can apply style changes universally, arrange chapters and sections in a breeze, and create a dynamic TOC, all from the Book feature.
And… In your NYC IDUG presentation I believe you talked about having non graphics professionals support this type of workflow. One in which they would have to monitor their style usage to import into InDesign properly…
The friend I’m working with is a Mechanical Engineer!!! We got it right in only one day! So there is hope
Thank you for all the great work.
Damian
April 7th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
This is a great case history, Damian. I’m glad to hear I’m not the only geed who things document efficiency is fun.
June 19th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Hi,
I am trying to make a book that has some chapter start pages on left-hand pages. I can see the pagination as starting on an even page for those chapters, but the Indesign file itself still appears to be a right-hand page. Is this going to work when I move to PDFs for print?
thank you!
Gillian
June 19th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
Gillian –
Can you post a screen shot of your Pages panel (palette) for me to see the problem?
When I try this set-up, and choose Continue on next even page from the Book Page Numbering Options dialog, I checked both the Insert Blank Page and Automatically Update Page & Section Numbers checkboxes.
Insert Blank page will add a page to the end of the previous document, and start your next document on a right-hand page. It verifies that in the Book panel, and when I open the InDesign documents that should start on left-hand pages, they are set up that way in the Pages panel.
Do your options match what I’ve described above?
June 20th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Hi: I work with Gillian and, basically, we were attempting to create a seamless book made up of chapters of various lengths. We wanted the first page of each chapter to directly follow the last page of the previous one, regardless of whether it was a right- or left-hand page. When I first created the book (with “continue from previous document” in “book paging options” selected), even though the opening left-handed pages were numbered correctly (e.g., 256, 262, etc.) they appeared in the pages palette set to the right of the spine. I manually rearranged them (OK. . .[I hope]?) but was wondering if there was a way to do this automatically. . . (without adding blank pages).
Thank you for your time!
July 1st, 2008 at 9:07 am
I can’t thank you enough. I had abandoned using the book feature through sheer frustration. However, this podcast makes the fundamental idea and function of the book features so clear that I’m eager to have another go at it!
Cindy
November 3rd, 2008 at 11:10 pm
Excellent presentation! I am going to view your other casts as well. Thank you very much. I can’t wait to try it out.