Best practices for manuals with images

Question

Hi all, I am creating manuals that have headers and images/dimensional drawings. I will need to edit these manuals with additional text and or images to add delete. I have been using one large text box on an A4 layout and then adding everything inside. The textboxes are linked at the end of the bottom of each page to the next page so that the headers (levels 1-4) and table of contents will all sync properly. However, this means that when I add in text the images get thrown around at times. I may of course also delete text, add in several pages, delete images, etc as needed when updating these documents. I should note manauls are around 200 pages long. This creates a bit of chaos and the only strength of this practice seems to be the linking of the headers. I do realize I could manaually adjust the headers, but was not sure if this is the best approach.

It was suggested to me to make small textboxes for each section and then I can add or edit these but the issue is it seems the headers wont sync up? Any suggestions on this for a best practices approach would be greatly appreciated. I am trying to learn how to handle these tasks in the way Indesign is best utilized. Thank you so much!

Eugene Tyson · Accepted Answer

Hi Christine!
Hope you're keeping well!

Anchoring your images within the text is the best way to keep them together and flowing

https://helpx.adobe.com/ie/indesign/using/anchored-objects.html#:~:text=To%20anchor%20an%20existing%20object,%2C%20and%20choose%20Edit%20%3EPaste.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwgdGM4dQ6A&ab_channel=PariahBurke

And plenty of other online resources out there.

Hope it helps!

Barb Binder · Answer

Hi @Christine324 and welcome to the InDesign Community forum!

Here are few tips for long document layout:

Define primary frames on the parent pages. This way, if you get a layout change (i.e., different margins) you can edit the parent pages and the text on the body pages reflows.
Use the Running Head variable to automatically pick up the content from the body pages and add it to the headers. If you edit the content on the page, the headers update themselves.
Anchor the images to the text so that as you add/remove content, the image adjust themselves. Unfortunately, this isn't seamless in InDesign, so expect to have to manually adjust some of the images after an edit, and with that in mind,
Consider breaking up the .indd file into logical sections/chapters and pull them back together in an InDesign .indb book file. This will minimize the reflow issues after edits. Once you set up your book, you create a book-level table of contents as well as control the numbering, chapter order and even change one of the .indd files and sync the changes to the other files in the book.

One of our Adobe Community Experts, @Jeff Witchel, ACI runs a user group that meets regularly online. I see that another one of our Adobe Community Experts, Laurie Ruhlin, is presenting an upcoming session on long document layout. She's an outstanding presenter—very clear and easy to follow—I highly recommend anyone working in long document layout attend that meeting online on July 23. If you register but can't make the meeting, Jeff will send out a link to the recording so that you can watch it at your convenience.

https://www.meetup.com/adobe-indug-indesign-user-group/

~Barb

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