When exporting my book, the pages do not flow as spreads.

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
May 19, 2020
7 replies
2373 views

Hello all,

I am trying to create a PDF and ePUB of the book I have create in InDesign, however the pages are not flowing properly. I have some nice flowing spreads and then two random pages that stick out as individual pages. All the chapters are individual files with facing pages that I have saved into a book that has been synchronised. How do I get all the pages flowing nicely?

Thank you

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Correct answer Barb Binder

Hi Tom from London:

I'll address the PDF part of the question. The book is set up correctly, I suspect it was your export settings. In the animation below, I am exporting an Interactive PDF (because I believe you want to see the PDF on screen) and I'm setting it to Export as Pages (not spreads), Fit to Page and Two up with the cover page.

~Barb

Barb Binder

Correct answer

Community Expert

Hi Tom from London:

I'll address the PDF part of the question. The book is set up correctly, I suspect it was your export settings. In the animation below, I am exporting an Interactive PDF (because I believe you want to see the PDF on screen) and I'm setting it to Export as Pages (not spreads), Fit to Page and Two up with the cover page.

~Barb

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training

Derek Cross

Community Expert

If I were producing this text-heavy book, I'd produce one version as a PDF and create another as a Reflowable PDF. The two formats are not compatible.

B

boots_n_patches

Inspiring

cust: "… however the pages are not flowing properly. I have some nice flowing spreads and then two random pages that stick out as individual pages …"
issue: the flow is not continuous when viewing in acrobat … sometime dbl-pg and sometime sngl-pg.

this is elementary … i have attached two screen-caps below … to better illustrate.

in acrobat … the pdf layout appears different between pg18-19.
in indesign … division between chap1+2 appears different.

start indesign … open both chap1+2+3 files … toggling “pages-palette” in view for each

chap-1 … first-pg starts on right-side … last-page ends on left-side
chap-2 … first-pg starts on right-side … last-page ends on right-side
chap-3 … first-pg starts on left-side … last-page ends on right-side

all other chaps … first-pg starts on left-side … last-page ends on right-side … this is good (according to poster).

according to your request … seems to me you’d want the first-page to always appear on left-side in the pages-palette … and last-page to always appears on right-side. the way you have it set up … you are commanding indesign to stop current pagination after pg18 and start new pagination at pg19. you may add blank-page at end of chapter … such as what you correctly set up between chap-4 and chap-5.

fwiw … same issue appears with toc-section … you start/stop it obnoxiously … forcing the software to begin/end pagination crudely.

original-layout:

optimal-layout:

M

Manan Joshi

Community Expert

I also get the same results as you have pasted in your screenshot when using spread option, it seems to make sense as well. It is not merging two seperate spreads into one. A similiar question is being discussed at the following link, there a user has posted a workaround that you can try unless some chimes in with a proper way(if it even exits)

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign/export-book-to-pdf/m-p/11148525?page=1#M187093

-Manan