HELP!!How To Layout Pages With 3 Hole Punch

It seems like somethjign super basic, because that's a lot of valuable realestate on the left side of the margin going to waste because of holes. Holes are always going to be in the exact same place regardless of paper size, these are industry standards in binders and books that put the rings in the exact same places. It should be in-built into any good desktop publishing program. I'm surprised how must pushback you seem to be getting. 

I've been through this many times in several similar situations. The solution that I use currently  is to start over again and layout the page or MP using guides to display the column with the 3 holes and then layout the page in the remaining area. When you print the book the area to punch the holes will be blank unless you place a visible margin or any other content. Or place small images to demonstrate where the holes will be punched.

A good way to visualise this is to look at a notebook that has holes punched. Set 1 guide as a first margin to allow for the holes. Then layout the page in the remaining area. Create 2 master pages. 1 for the odd sides and 1 for the even sides. If your current content falls into the margin area, then you will need to layout the content over again within the new content area. ID will not do this for you unfortunately (I foolishly tried this a long time ago and learned a painful lesson). Since you lose about 1" +/- on the page (for the holes), your content layout will need to change and ID has no way of knowing your layout intentions.

I guess what i was asking is if there is something like document setup (us letter,us legal, etc if i could have a hole punched sheet. I guess not.  I thought the location of the hole punch like for 3 ring binders was always in the same position.

Thanks for all your help!

I already have facing pages with sufficient margins set up.  What i want to see on the pages are the actual position of the holes.  My document is a standard 8.5x11" - the only thing i can think of doing is placing circles by hand (measuring an 8.5x11" sheet of paper and measuring the space between each hole.  However, that's pretty unprofessional and unreliable....Any ideas?

Two sided douments are usually set up as "Facing Pages." In the document setup make sure you set the "inside" margin wide enough to accomodate the holes.

If your document is already set up as single pages you can use that, so long as the margins are symmetrical and wide enough, or you can go back to Documetn setup and change to facing pages. If you do that, you will need to go to the master page and chang ethe options so the page count for the master is 2 instead of 1, and then under the Layout menu choose margins and columns to adjut the margins on the master as required. If you've alreay laid out pages, enable "Layout Adjustment" (also under the Layout menu) before changing the margins and anything snapped to the existing margins should adjust to the new ones. You may also need to adjust the postions of elemnts on the master pages to mirror, and you'll need to put all of the content onto both halves of the master spread.

Just go to the master and change the margins...I'm not sure what else you're looking for, but if you designed the live pages according to those margins everything should adjust automatically.

Bob