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Question

Indesign Book Document

Forum|Forum|4 months ago
September 23, 2025
7 replies
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I have a 22 chapter book in Indesign. Formatted ahead of time in Parent Pages, sychronized successfully, images embedded. IND tells me I have no errors. Chapter Title appears on top left page, Book title on top right page, page numbers at bottom left and bottom right. Last chapter, I noticed it said, in lower. case instead of all CAPS (as formatted), "chapter 22" instead of chapter title. All the others are correct as formatted.

I decided to say Chapter 1 , Chapter 2, etc. at the top of the first page of each chapter and moved the chapter title down at bit and centered. Now, every other chapter lists chapter title # at the top left of each left page for that chapter instead of chapter title. What have I done wrong? I copied and used a test book, synchronized the book but now the page titles (top left) alternate with chapter numbers instead.

Anyone have experience or information about this? Would appreciate some clues. tanX

InCopy workflow

Barb Binder

Community Expert

I'm not sure.
I think I will have to go into the parent pages to check that.

You can see the applied style on the body pages: either in the ¶ view of Window > Control panel, or Window > Styles > Paragraph styles panel or in the Window > Properties panel.

~Barb

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training

M

M.E.310814321c2qAuthor

Known Participant

I'll try that when I open it up again.
By Body Pages, I'm.assuming that with the book open to a chapter,
then I access the menu choice "Window", etc. Hope that's right.

Barb Binder

Community Expert

Each of these applications is daunting to teach yourself. I get it.

So it sounds like you set up the running header variable to collect the Chapter Titles. Is the chapter number—which us now showing up in the running head—assigned the paragraph style Chapter Title?

~Barb

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training

M

M.E.310814321c2qAuthor

Known Participant

I'm not sure.
I think I will have to go into the parent pages to check that.
When I set it up, I was following along with a youtube video
about setting up a book doc in indesign and how to set up
a TOC.
Everything worked out but I have difficulty remembering the steps
and the order of them as well as clearly understanding how the stuff
works according to the terms used for each.

What I currently have is: top right of odd pages, book title
and top left of even pages chapter title.

But, I don't have anything that says Chapter 1, Chapter 2, etc.
When I tried to enter Chapter 1 at the top of the page, it showed up
in the variable, even pages, top left. That I did not expect nor want.

But I think it would be better if that is the way it would work, especially
if I also go to ePUB (which I'm planning on for possible sales).and a TOC
that connects to each page, chapter, etc just from a click in the TOC.
I don't remember what that function is called though.

So much to learn, but it seems even more to remember.
I wonder if I will ever get this to have a chance for publication before
I die or the world suddenly and drastically changes to where publishing
is not the most important thing but simple survival is.

Tootle.................lou. 🙂

Barb Binder

Community Expert

Ok @M.E.310814321c2q:

What on earth are you referring to?

Let's break this down...

Running heads

Did you define a Running Header variable to pull the Chapter Titles into the running heads automatically? If not, how did you do it?

~Barb

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training

M

M.E.310814321c2qAuthor

Known Participant

Yes, when I first set up the doc, my paragraph and character styles and,
and when done did my TOC and that is where I set up the variables.

How to go in to that again and change it without messing anything up,
is unclear to me. I'm guessing it must be done in the Master, now Parent,
Pages window.

Hope that is clear, because a lot of it isn't to me.
Very slow learning Indesign, Illustrator and Photoshop on my own.

M

M.E.310814321c2qAuthor

Known Participant

Hi.
Now I am being told by my printer that I need to flatten my images or
transparencies.
I'm slowly able to understand how to do that but following some tutorials,
do not find or see
a choice about 'flattening' in the layers panel.

however, I do have another question.
I create some of my images in Illustrator, then open them in Photoshop and
save as
.tiffs because that is the way I have to use them.
Then I place from the folder they are in into my Indesign Book.

So when should I flatten these transparencies?
Is that done in Indesign, in Photoshop or in Illustrator.

And why is this irreversible? Isn't it just another way of "grouping them"?
Seems like these rabbit holes never connect to one another.

These Adobe products can do just about everything but you have to know
everything in
order to do anything!

Barb Binder

Community Expert

Hi @M.E.310814321c2q:

The Running Header variable collects the first occurrence of the referenced paragraph style. If you clicked at the beginning of the Chapter Title, pressed Enter, arrowed up and added the chapter number then it is using the same style as Chapter Title. Change the style name to something different, like Chapter Number.

As for the case, we can format text to appear in all caps but when you collect the text from the source files, it pulls it in as it was originally typed. Select the words chapter 22 in chapter 22 and choose Type > Change Case > Upper Case. Page down to see if that corrects it.

~Barb

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training

M

M.E.310814321c2qAuthor

Known Participant

Hi Barb.
What on earth are you referring to?

RvdT

Inspiring

Check what variables are being used.

Running Header or Chapter Number

Brad @ Roaring Mouse

Community Expert

Are all the chapters in one file, or are you using the Book feature for 22 different files.

Can you show a screen grab of what is "not right" version what it should be?

M

M.E.310814321c2qAuthor

Known Participant

All chapters, intro, preface, copyright page, title page, endnotes, about author, dedication page (any I missed) were uploaded into the book panel. When I edit any chapter (or others), I save and replace what is already there because I have to. So far, few issues. But I added one page to the last chapter to 1. add new info and 2. to make it an even number of pages for the printer. Oh, and I did add blank pages as were needed for books, after the front cover is opened.

Cannot figure out where my screenshots disappear to in Mac Os 15.1.6 or is it Mac OS 15.6.1? Not on it right now. so right now I cannot send a screenshot of the window warning I get.

leo.r

Community Expert

Cannot figure out where my screenshots disappear to in Mac Os

By @M.E.310814321c2q

By default they should be on the desktop unless a custom location was specifically set by a script. Regardless, you can always send screenshots to the clipboard by adding Control to the regular shortcuts (Cmd-Shift-Ctrl-3 or Cmd-Shift-Ctrl-4). Then just paste them into your message here (or, if you want to save them, open a new document in Preview, which will contain the clipboard automatically).