A Tip for Duplicating Pages
Direct from the obscure-but-useful-tips department: A really easy, quick way to duplicate a page is to hold down the option key (Mac) or alt key (Windows) while dragging the page icon in the Pages panel. However, there is a bit of subtlety to this that you should be aware of. If you option/alt-drag a page to the right of another page icon, you’ll see a vertical bar indicating that the duplicate will be inserted at that position. Note that the hand icon doesn’t feature a “plus” sign in this case to indicate the page is being duplicated, so it looks like the page is being moved. But as long as you hold down the option/alt key, the page will indeed be duplicated.
Even though there is no “plus” sign on the hand icon, page 1 will be duplicated between pages 5 and 6 when the mouse is released.
If you option/alt-drag a page after the last page of the document, you will see a hand cursor with a plus, and no vertical bar, indicating that the page will be inserted at the end of the document.
In this example, page 1 will be duplicated at the end of the document when the mouse is released.
Here is where you need to be careful. If you option/alt-drag a page in the vertical zone between two rows of pages, or too far to the right of a row of page icons, the page will be duplicated at the end of the document.
In this example, page 1 will be duplicated at the end of the document when the mouse is released.
So if you want to duplicate a page at a specific location in your document, be sure to option/alt-drag the page and move the mouse around until the vertical bar is displayed in the location where you want the new page to be.
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What settings do you use to put have the pages showing in the panel like that. Mine generally are listed
I remember a discussion on duplicating pages through javascript:
https://creativepro.com/topic/script-to-duplicate-pagespread-after-current
This one-liner will duplicate the current spread:
app.layoutWindows[0].activeSpread.duplicate (LocationOptions.AFTER, app.layoutWindows[0].activeSpread);
and this one the current page:
app.layoutWindows[0].activePage.duplicate (LocationOptions.AFTER, app.layoutWindows[0].activePage);
Rebecca,
Go to the flyout menu in the Pages panel and choose View Pages/Horizontally.
(You can also right click inside the Pages panel and choose View Pages, etc.)
Thanks for sharing, this saved me a lot of time in indesign. Super easy to actually duplicate! I appreciate the tip.
I’ve been using this trick forever in InDesign, but can’t get it to work anymore. The only way I’ve been able to drag to duplicate a page is dragging it to the new page button, which does not allow me to specify where it goes. Did something change in IDCC?
No, I don’t think anything has changed in CC.
I ran into this problem too. This trick only works if you have one page per spread. If you have multiple pages in a spread it just moves the page, but if you have one page the option or alt key will duplicate the selected page wherever you want it.
Thanks, this tip saved me a ton of time!
Nice one! So helpful in a 200 page document!
Seems you can drag-duplicate multiple selected pages only to the end; single pages will duplicate anywhere, as described.
Mitico! Grande!
grab the page numbers themselves below the spread for this to work as it used to
Thanks so much, this was frustrating me no end as I couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t always doing what I expected. The + disappearing and it still being duplicated was what was confusing me.
Can anyone help I am new to this. I have learnt how to duplicate pages but it’s for a planner so when I change the dates on the second page and so on it changes the date on every page and replaces with new date. How can I save each page as different dates?
this was life changing – it’s the simple things in life
Reviving an old post – Duplicating a page this way ALWAYS moves it to the end. I’ve tried a number of different methods. You can duplicate a spread where you want it, but duplicating a single page only moves it to the end. Does anyone know a fix?
I just re-tested this for the first time in awhile, with InDesign 17.2.1. Here is what I found:
In facing pages documents, option/alt dragging an entire spread will DUPLICATE the spread to the new location as described in the original post, but option/alt dragging a single page of a spread will MOVE the page to the new location.
Likewise, in a non-facing pages document, option/alt dragging a single page will DUPLICATE the page to the new location as described in the original post, but option/alt dragging multiple selected pages will MOVE the pages to the new location.
Inconsistent, weird behavior indeed!