Cannot delete a spread, or pages from a spread

[Nadia239113708qvi]

Hi, I am trying to delete two pages from a 100 page document. Pages RD900-10 and RD900-11. I delete RD900-10, which works fine, but when I go to delete RD900-11 in that same spread, the only option available is to "Delete Spread". So I click to delete the spread, and both the pages from the spread pop back up in the document. Please help

[Barb Binder]

Hi Nadia:

Let's switch tactics here. Instead of trying to delete the spread, switch to the Type tool, highlight and delete the content on page RD900-10 and RD900-11.

~Barb

[Nadia239113708qvi]

Thanks Barb. I have already tried that may times. 

[Nadia239113708qvi]

I meant "many" times

[Peter Spier]

And what happens when you do that? It works here.

I looked the the (very long) document history and see this was originally a Pagemaker 6.5 file that was converted on Windows XP in InDesign CS3 way back in 2008, and it's had a number of crashes and furhter conversions over the years. It looks like you're still using InDesign Version 14, which is now 3 versions old. Is that true?

Have you considered that this might be a good time to rebuild this file from scratch? 14 years is a long time to go on overwriting a file, especially6 one that starte as PM6.5 and has a history of instability. I hope you at least have some backup versions stashed away.

[Nadia239113708qvi]

WOW! Thank you so much. I did not realize text from the other pages would come up until I saw your attachment. Thank you so so much. Huge help!!

[Peter Spier]

The structure of this file is, at this point, pretty disjointed after all the years of editing and moving pages around. If you show text threads to see how the frames are organized it's pretty frightening with the story containing the spread you want to delete being interrupted by a dozen or so pages in just the section I looked at.

[Peter Spier]

to expand on that, becuase the story ias discontinuous, when you delete the text on pages rd900-1 & 11 you move text up from further down the chain, eventually getting blank pages at RD900 24 & 26.

I don't envy what you have to do here.

[Barb Binder]

Hi @Nadia239113708qvi:

It was hard to see—even after zooming in—but there were page break characters at the top of pages RD900-10 and RD900-11. When you deleted the frames, they created a new spread and continued to force new pages. You had to highlight and remove them for the content on the following pages to close up the space.

~Barb

Left page

Right page

[Peter Spier]

Barb,

I think deleting the text this way is going to be dangerous due to the dicontinuous flow. The order of the tables is probably shifting and you would need to look very carefully to catch it.

 I haven't checked carefully for table rearranging, but I think it works to run the story splitter script available at https://creativepro.com/downloads/StorySplitter.jsx (written for CS3 and earlier, but still seems to work in version 17. If not, you can try to run it from a folder in the scripts panel named Version 5.0 Scripts -- note the name is case-sensitive). I ran it on the thread with the spread to be deleted, choosing to break all frames, and I was able to remove the offending spread and reduce the page count by two which leads me to believe nothing was shuffled.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

As mentioned, it's because your text and tables are all part of one thread, so when you delete the 10-11 spread, your text rethreads to the next page.

So, the best way to handle this now and not affect layout in further spreads is, first, View > Show Hidden Characters if not already. 2) Delete the current spread 10-11, this will bump the copy onto the next spread.

3) Insert your cursor at the beiginning of the "empty" left text box before the paragraph return and start forward-deleting until your table pops back to the new p10.

4) Done.

[Barb Binder]

Hey @Peter Spier:

Sorry for the delayed response—I was out of the country. Yes, of course the file should be reworked from scratch so that everything flows as expected. It's only 100 pages—short in my world—so it shouldn't take that long, with or without a script.

~Barb

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

No need to rework this file at all. It just needed 3 line sof text deleted from the thrread. It took less than a minute to fix this file, as per my suggestion above.

[Peter Spier]

Brad, did you actually check the order of the table before and after doing that from there to the end of the file? There are several, perhaps many, places where individual pages have been inserted outside the threaded story and the thread leaps over them, so moving pages up in the thread by deleting those three lines will, I think, totally  mess up the table order.

That's why I suggested unthreading everything via script first.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

Yes. all pages were accurate after the change.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

Fixed.

Your RD900 section has only 41 pages now as oppposed to 43, so check your page numbering in any ToC, etc.