Deleting 1 page and 1 spread, causing ripple effect of damage.

[luciaa17409449]

Hi - could use some help with deleting or even knowing what is wrong.
I want to delete Child page 1 and also child pages 2-3 (spread).   As soon as I delete them, the rest of the pages of the book begin to appear very strange.  I'd like to just remove 1, 2-3 and start over with those pages, but afraid it will impact all other pages.  Any idea why this is happening? Thanks so much.
I can upload the in-design file if needed.   Screenshots attached.    Thanks so much. 

[luciaa17409449]

Update, made progress but not quite completely.   I was able to successfully remove pages 2-3., but not page 1.  
Then, I went to Page 1 and assigned it to a new Parent Page.  I also removed any content (text boxes) in page 1.
Tried to delete Page 1.   A ripple effect of damage to the remaining pages takes place at that point.  Is there a way to delete Page 1 without causing damage to other pages?  Thanks.

[Rishabh_Tiwari]

Hi,

Thank you for reaching out. Please try the suggestions shared in this discussion and let us know if this helps or if you need further assistance.

Thanks

Rishabh

[luciaa17409449]

Hi, thank you so much.  I followed his steps and they didn't work for me. I think the concept of what he is doing is correct, but since my page situation is a bit different, I wasn't sure what to do differently.  Any help is appreciated. 🙂 
@Jeff Witchel, ACI Thanks for your great response in your help provided by @Rishabh_Tiwari .
I would love a little bit of guidance on my situation- very similar to the one that you helped out with, but didn't work and my 100 plus pages were impacted still.  
Thank you both so much!

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@luciaa17409449

You should just delete contents of those pages and apply different Masters if you need.

Then add new contents.

[luciaa17409449]

Thank you so much, Robert.  I did try that and was unsuccessful.  I removed all contents from the page, also made sure that it was not associated with a parent page, then deleted that page, and this is the result- attached.  

Since a few of the screenshots in the earlier post are now outdated, I am sharing my most recent screenshot, filename 4-16-24-9pmEST.jpg--
Thanks so much.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@luciaa17409449

But you don't have to "physically" delete those pages - just contents.

[Tim Sheasby]

Further to what @Robert at ID-Tasker points out, If shuffle document pages is turned on (the default) then what you are experiencing is the correct result since deleting pages 1-3 will make page 4 the new page 1 which should, in Western books, be a right hand page. Just delete the old contents and copy in the new but keep the existing pages in place. This avoids the default re-shuffle behaviour.

[luciaa17409449]

Hi Robert- thanks again for your help.    I had deleted the contents - but it left me with a sort of skeleton/not a page. I must have done more than just removed the contents...?   What I'm still struggling with is why the page doesn't have a "page" appearance and what is missing? Inserting a new page would be a pretty little blank white page.  This page 1 (olddoc.jpg) that I will be keeping is not a normal page.. at which point did i screw it up hahaha and how do i get ot back to function like a newdoc.jpg page?
Adding new content to the current page 1 is definitely not right either (1-adding-new-content.jpg)
What would adding contents to that page would consist of?
Thanks so much.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@luciaa17409449 

You are either doing something wrong - or your file is corrupted?

First, try IDMLing to fix your document:

1) export your document as IDML

2) open this IDML file

3) save it with a new name - do not overwrite your original document

Then, try this:

1) go to Page 1 - double-click on the Page 1 in the Pages panel,

2) press CTRL+A / Select All,

3) hit DELETE,

4) go to Page 2 and repeat steps 2) & 3)

[luciaa17409449]

Hi Robert
Just before seeing this notification, I had tried this and was able to delete the stubborn page 1.
I unchecked both Allow document pages to shuffle and allow selected spread to shuffle.  
I was then able to delete only page 1 without messing up the rest of the file.

I will test out your solution too - on a prior saved file (from this morning) just to see how it will work out.
Thank you again and again.

[rob day · Accepted solution]

I unchecked both Allow document pages to shuffle and allow selected spread to shuffle.
I was then able to delete only page 1 without messing up the rest of the file.

It sounds like you are trying to have the first page of the document start to the left of the spine like this?

If you do that, where is the page that backs up to the starting page, which is now to the left of the spine? In my example the document started with 12 pages, and after removing page 1 there are now 11 pages. It would be impossible to bind a book with 11 pages—every sheet has a front and back.

[luciaa17409449]

Hi Rob - thanks for your reply.  Gotcha- thanks for the visuals and for the reminder to have that page there.
It wasn't that I didn't want the page (page 1) entirely -- it's that it was completely corrupted and I still have no idea why it looked the way that it did.  I couldn't add content to it if I tried, and I couldn't keep it as a blank page. I would have bee okay with just keeping it there (and still am okay with it), but after all of this, I at least got rid of the page that was causing issues and that I couldn't do much with.  Hope that makes sense.

Would you know why the page looks the way that it does?  Screenshot attached.

PS After removing page 1 successfully,  and after reading your comment, I went to add back a "blank page 1" to make sure that what you taught is applied (impossible to bind a book with 11 pages) -- i see that it is necessary to add it back.  But adding a blank page back (for me, first attempt) caused all other pages to have content overwritten on their already "ready" pages.   

Thanks again, I'm a huge Adobe fan, but had never used InDesign before this.   Photoshop more than anything. 

Thanks again. 

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

[...]
Would you know why the page looks the way that it does?  Screenshot attached.

[...]

By @luciaa17409449

Have you tried IDMLing to fix your document?

[rob day]

Also, if @Robert at ID-Tasker ‘s IDML suggestion doesn’t work try deleting you InDesign Caches folder—UI problems are often Cache related. On MacOS delete this folder and restart ID

~user ▸ ⁨Library⁩ ▸ ⁨Caches⁩ ▸ ⁨Adobe InDesign⁩ ▸ ⁨Version X.0⁩

Windows:

Users > AppData > Local > Adobe > InDesign > Version X > en_US > Caches >

[luciaa17409449]

Rob, just saw that I didn't answer the question you asked
"It sounds like you are trying to have the first page of the document start to the left of the spine like this?" 

Actually, all that I am doing is adding content, not understanding completely the way that the bpages work - but learning as I go. 

Are you saying that the spreads should look more like this image (which I just found online 🙂

Thanks.

[rob day]

Are you saying that the spreads should look more like this image (which I just found online 🙂

No. The cover (or page 1 of the interior text pages) needs to be to the right of the spine, which is the default with Facing Pages checked in Document Setup. The imposed spreads will be folded—with a Facing Page document the spine is in the center of the spreads:

[luciaa17409449]

Understood.  Thank you so much for this visual.  Makes perfect sense.   Appreciate it.