Alternative version of document with fewer pages within same document?

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
March 26, 2025
3 replies
213 views

This is one of those "surely other people need to do this", and "surely InDesign can do this" but "I have no idea what keywords to hit google with to get an answer" type things!

I'm working on a book that has a digitally downloadable version of exactly the same document but with six additional pages.

I looked into Alternative Layout and Liquid Layout and those tools seem to be about different page sizes and orientations rather than a book with additional pages in some scenarios.

I also tried 'hide spread', but that seems to be to only make editing the book easier and didn't obey a rebuild of the Table of Contents to _not_ show the hidden pages (so I didn't even try to create a PDF to see if hidden pages are output, I suspect they are).

How would you go about producing a book which has two versions, identical except for one has six extra pages and the necessary Table of Contents and page number adjustments to make it happen?

Maintaining two different documents isn't appealing, though it might be what I have to do in the even there are no better solutions.

How to

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

@MrZZY

What is the contents of those 6x additional pages?

If it's always the same - beside of course TOC to be updated and other auto-refreshable contents - you could do it without the book feature.

Make your additional 6x pages as a separate document - in the same way as for the Book.

When you need to prepare your extended version - open both documents and then "move" pages from one to another - if you don't select option to delete pages it will just copy.

Then refresh TOC and anything else you need to update.

So it's kind of a "semi-book" functionality 😉

James Gifford—NitroPress

Legend

Besides solutions already given, you could break the document into INDD files and gather the appropriate ones into Book files, which can apply their own numbering scheme to the sections and create a unique TOC etc. It's not simple and maintaining a library of component files that can be smoothly shared takes attention to detail.

But otherwise, the idea of one file that can be selectively exported with seamless numbering, TOC, etc. is not really workable in any app I know of. All approaches take some degree of manual selection, management, update and review.

Randy Hagan

Community Expert

I concur. My training documentation is built in 1-4 page modular documents covering specific funtions/features of various bits of Adobe software.

Building custom documentation for clients is a matter of snapping together the appropriate modules for what they want to learn — sometimes with additonal custom content, but often times without. Run an index, then a table of contents and run off however many copies I need for my custom classes.

The only reason I didn't mention that was because it would have the original poster creating lots of extra document files instead of just two. Thank you for adding this option.

Randy

Randy Hagan

Community Expert

Alternate layout only offers you different layout options for an existing document file.

If you want to create an additional document, with additional pages, you'll need to create an additional document file. As you've already discovered, workarounds cause problems. The simplest solution is often the best option. The best way to do two different documents is with two different document files.

Hope this helps,

Randy

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