Skip to main content
Participant
July 24, 2018
Answered

Centre spread pages

  • July 24, 2018
  • 3 replies
  • 1206 views

Hi, is there a way to highlight or lock the centre spread so that when pages are moved, inserted or deleted, InDesign automatically marks up the two "new" centre pages?

In pages view would be really useful, or just in the document. Only to view while editing, not to appear in the final publication.

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer rob day

    Thanks, Sierra


    This AppleScript will set the page color of the doc's the middle spread to RGB 0|255|255. Paste the code into Apple's Script Editor and save it into your scripts folder where you can run it by double clicking or assign a key command to it.

    --this is the page color's RGB values edit if you want to change

    set pgcolor to [0, 255, 255]

    tell application "Adobe InDesign CC 2018"

        tell active document

          

            --check the current page colors and if the center spread color exists set it to master color

            set pgs to every page

            repeat with p in pgs

                if page color of p is pgcolor then

                    set page color of p to use master color

                end if

            end repeat

          

            --set the center spread's page color to [0, 255, 255]

            set sprds to every spread

            set c to count of sprds

            if c mod 2 is 1 then

                set cntr to (round c / 2) + 1

                set page color of every page of spread cntr to pgcolor

            else

                display dialog "The active document does not have a center spread"

            end if

        end tell

    end tell

    3 replies

    Mike Witherell
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    July 24, 2018

    And don't forget color-coding:

    Pages panel menu button flyout > Page Attributes > Color Label

    Mike Witherell
    Participant
    July 24, 2018

    Thank you. If the pages are moved, the colour label moves with it - is there a way to lock a colour label or similar to the page number (ie the middle of the document) rather than the page? And automatically update it if the number of pages in the document changes?

    Mike Witherell
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    July 24, 2018

    No, not that I know of (within InDesign).

    Mike Witherell
    rob day
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    July 24, 2018

    A facing page document might not have a center spread (i.e. 18 pages would have 10 spreads).

    If the spread count is odd, a script could make the center spread active. Something like this AppleScript (OSX only)

    tell application "Adobe InDesign CC 2018"

        set x to every spread of active document

        set c to count of x

        if c mod 2 is 1 then

            set cntr to (round c / 2) + 1

            set active page of active window to page 1 of spread cntr of active document

        end if

    end tell

    Mike Witherell
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    July 24, 2018

    Select your two-page spread. Go to Pages panel menu button flyout > and uncheck (turn off) Allow Selected Spread to Shuffle. This will put brackets around the spread numbers like this: [x-x]. Adding or removing pages elsewhere will not make these two pages come apart from each other.

    Mike Witherell