Combining 3 documents into one in InDesign

[NJ Author]

Every year I revise a 150-page publication that has existed (and grown) since about 1995. It was originally created in Quark and converted to InDesign in the CS2 or CS3 era. I am now using CS6. Because this book was created long before the idea of multiple page dimensions within a document was possible, I've so far kept three different documents, which, when complete, I print each to PDF, import documents 2 and 3 into document 1, reorder the pages as needed, then save it as a final (combined) document that I send to press. There has to be a better way!

The first document is a text introduction to the book. The second is a series of portrait-formatted pages of maps and diagrams. The third document is a similar series of maps and diagrams, only landscape-formatted instead.

I would like to have only one single document with all three sections combined. I think for the first and third it would just be a matter of importing master pages from one document into the other, moving the content over, and changing pagination. The difficult aspect I suspect will be combining both the portrait and landscape documents into the new "master" document.

When you flip through the book and switch between a portrait and landscape page, each page has a frame with copyright info, page number, contact website, changelog and so on, all in the same location; it's just that some content is more suited to being presented vertically and other content looks better horizontal.

Any assistance in making this move would be tremendously appreciated, and my thanks in advance.

[Sjaani]

I think you've really got two options. You can work with the three documents as a Book, File > New > Book and keep the current documents separate.

Or and this might take a bit of time initially. You could open all of the documents use Window > Arrange > Tile so you can see each one. Make sure you are on the Pages panel of one document, select ALL pages then drag and drop them into one of the documents. Then do the same thing with the third document. This will then allow you to have it all as a single document. You can then make any additional changes you need within the one document.

[NJ Author]

Well combining 4 of the 5 documents was trivially easy. But as I suspected, the last one is a major problem; bringing the portrait-oriented pages into a landscape document. There are 33 portrait pages and 125 landscape-oriented pages. And to make matters worse, the 33 portrait pages aren't continuous. 1-22 are, then it's "one here, one there" scattered throughout the rest of the book. The nature of the content is such that there's no better way to visually present the material.

I would dearly love to have all the pages in one document if that's in any way possible!

[NJ Author · Accepted solution]

OK, a followup. With great success I managed to do this in a few steps and everything is utterly PERFECT right now!

The secret was to copy the vertical master page from the vertical file and place it into the main document. Then I went back into the vertical document, in the Pages menu, selected the pages in question, right-click, Move Pages..., select the main document as the destination and where in the document they're to go ("after page..."). Switch back to the master document and apply the master page to the newly-imported pages. Poof! Done!!

There were still a few minor fires that had to be put out, possibly from style conflicts but everything so far is looking great!