indb and importing non-indd files

Question

The book I'm working on is coming along. I've imported the chapter files and gone through the entire thing making cross-chapter hyperlinks, always opening individual chapters from within the book panel.

In the last edition, which was in ID but which I did not do, I sent the publisher what it called External Assets. Those are files predominantly in pdf format, though some are docx. (I can always convert those to pdf.) I want to have hyperlinks in the book to those documents but do not want to paste the documents themselves into the text, so Place is inappropriate. Can I import those documents into the indb file and then just hyperlink to them as if they were material in another chapter? If not, how do I set up the links? (I suppose it's always possible that the publisher uploads them to its web site, so the hyperlinks go to a URL, just as many of the hyperlinks in the text do.)

Many thanks.

Joel Cherney · Accepted Answer

Willi's strategy is the right one, for your case.

Can I import those documents into the indb file and then just hyperlink to them as if they were material in another chapter?

Nope, only .indd can be included in .indb

I want to have hyperlinks in the book to those documents but do not want to paste the documents themselves into the text, so Place is inappropriate.

Paste and Place are very different. If I were in your shoes, I would convert all of the rest of the Word files to PDF, then Place all those PDFs into empty INDDs, then add those INDDs to the Book.

If not, how do I set up the links?

I imagine you could go into the final PDF exported from the Book file and add/edit hyperlinks using Acrobat's tools for same. If there is a good reason to not include your External Assets in the Book file, this is probably going to take the least amount of work.

Willi Adelberger · Answer

Create INDD files for foreign assets , place them there and add these INDD files into the INDB book file.

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