By: Michael Murphy
December 12 2006 • 2:37 PM
The InDesigner - Episode 33: Long Documents, Part 1 - Book Basics
After a long wait, here’s a long episode about working with long documents in InDesign. This first installment in a three-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.
Download it now or watch it in your browser:
The InDesigner - Episode 33 (39 MB, 19:45 minutes)
Thanks for this episode and I can’t wait for more. I always wanted to play a little wth those book options but actually i never had an oportunity - no documents long enough :). So thank You for Your efford, I’ll try to be a good student of Your’s.
PS. excuse my English - it sucks, i know. Working on it hard, thought.
I have to chime in here, as I’ve been lurking for a while. This was excellent, many thanks. I don’t get the chance to use this book option as much as I’d like either, but these webcasts overall are just chock full of info, I’ve enjoyed them all.
One word for episode 33:
Wow!
Michael has gone far beyond the mere indexing that was asked for. I need indexing for a cookbook I’ve been tasked to put together. Looks like the Book feature will pay off as well.
I agree with the people above. And I got curious about one thing: when you did that monstrous job with the two-hundred-and-something-page magazine, did you use the book feature?
First…thanks to all above for the feedback.
To Alexandre, specifically: My answer to this question is so long that it exceeded the comment limit for the site, so I created a whole post here — http://indesignsecrets.com/beyond-the-book-basics-episode.php — to answer your question.
Michael, I can only say thank you at this time. You’ve illustrated above anything else that Indesign is a great program with lots of usefull features. Looking forward to the next episode!
[...] Continuing the Long Documents series with the same book files used in Episode 33, this installment covers how to create an automated, dynamic Table of Contents for an InDesign book. Along the way, I emphasize the unique and critical relationship between an InDesign Table of Contents and Paragraph Styles, without which none of this would be possible. [...]
Hey, GREAT show! I was just checking out podcast 31, and tried to use flush space to create even spacing between words in a line of justified text, but am finding that it does not work. Instead, it just creates a small space, and leave the text justified.
What am I doing wrong? Thanks
M — is your text just justified, or is it “fully justfied?” That’s the key with the flush space. The trick I showed in that episode only works if the text is set to “full justify.” Hover over the alignment icons in the Control palette and let the tool tips guide you to the correct option. If that doesn’t fix it, let me know and I’ll dig deeper.
Hi, thanks for the great podcast!
I used the book feature once in the past. What I found totally annoying was that you could synchronize styles, swatches and all that, but there is actually no way I can make InDesign share or synchronize master pages, or even base a master page in a child document on a more general master page in the style source documents.
Are you aware of any solutions or workarounds for this, or do I really have to sync all documents manually?
My question to you is, what is the main advantage of creating a book instead of having it all in the one document? I presume you can automate TOC’s in a single doc, you can find/change paragraph styles in a single doc, you can automate pages too….so…unless you need to add and remove whole chapters, why go to all this hassle?
Andrew — Books are not always worked on all at one time by the same person. Having a collection of documents instead of just one allows an editor, contributor or other collaborator to work on one part of the book while you work on another.
Also, putting an entire book in one document just plain scares me. Documents can get corrupted, damaged, or accidentally deleted…and the more you work with a file, the bigger it tends to get. Losing one chapter is a lot less devastating than losing an entire project.
If you’re doing a 16- or 24-page brochure with a TOC and Index, then by all means do it in a single document. But if your project is bigger than that, and requires more than one person t work on it, setting up an InDesign book (which I wouldn’t characterize as a “hassle”), is more efficient.
Hello,
I would also love to hear an answer to Peter’s question which is how to synchronize master page elements, and also, included with that, how to set up the book chapter template.
Oops! I missed that part of Peter’s question. Thanks, Jen. The answer is, there’s no workaround for synchronizing master pages across a book in CS2 or earlier. But the option to synchronize masters has been added to the Book features of CS3, which is a very welcome and long overdue addition.
As for setting up the book chapter template, that’s not really a part of the long document features. Rather, it falls under the topic of “document construction” and brings in with it such things as Master Pages, Numbering & Section Options, and — with the release of CS3 — Text Variables for running headers and footers.
This will be the subject of a future videocast. Keep watching!
I have a question, when setting up my book, I bring all my documents in. But they do not number correctly, the page ranges on the side, just rang 1-28, 1-32, 1-32……. when they should 1-28, 29-40…… If you get what I am saying, how do I get them to auto number, they are set up to auto number, each chapter, I can manually change the start page for each chapter then it work but I would rather use auto number. What am I forgetting.
Meagan –
This may seem like an obvious question, but have you chosen Book Page Numbering Options from the Book panel menu and checked the “Automatically Update Page & Section Numbers” checkbox? Even if auto numbering is on in the individual documents, you need this checked to sequentially number the chapters in the book automatically.