How to Make a Clean Copy of an InDesign Book for Pre-Edit and Post-Edit Versions

Question

I am using a macbook air (m3) with mac OS 14.6 and InDesign 2025. 
 
I have laid out a long novel as a ID 'book'. It has 6 separate .indd files for the six sections of the book and one .indb file that stiches them all together as a book. The book has been edited and now I want to make a clean copy of the whole thing to a new folder and do the editorial corrections in that new version. That way, I will have the original pre-edit book and a new seperate edited book.
 
I tried just copying all seven files to a new folder, and giving them all new file names, but found that when I double-clicked the new .indb file, the book panel showed all the old names and any correction I made, were being made to the old files in the old folder.
 
How can I make a clean copy of the whole book, so I can keep the pre-edit and post-edit versions separate?

Willi Adelberger · Accepted Answer

In the book psnel menu select “Package book for print”. Choose the folder where you want to have your files.

James Gifford—NitroPress · Answer

If your goal is to have separate, live and editable forms of the project, you're already getting answers based on packaging, which is one approach.

The other, entirely simpler approach is to just archive the project files as a set and move forward with the edits. While I've found it useful, a few times, to be able to go back to a prior version of a project, a book in the editing phase tends to move forward, not back. An archive version for data security should be all you need. Unless you're working with an author likely to say, "Oh, let's just put Chapter 3 back as it was," in which case adjustments of an entirely different kind are called for.

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