We are writing a book and have a contractor doing the layout with indesign. Since the book is pretty far along, we want to get a copy in-house and our contractor is having trouble getting a backup onto an external drive (which she could then mail to us). She is a mac person and we are windows people. I don't know the software for anything so I'm hoping that someone can provide me a link or step by step to forward to the contractor.
Unless you know how to use InDesign, getting the files won't do you much good. If you just want to see what the designer is doing, have her export a PDF from InDesign and send it to you. You can view it on your Windows machine without any trouble at all, without needing any additional software. From there, you have several options if you want to offer editorial suggestions.
Not clear what part is proving difficult. Is it the art of packaging an InDesign file for sharing (Ask us about packaging) Or the art of using a disk on both Mac and Windows (Ask us how to use exFAT)?
Thank you for the reply. I definitely do not know the right lingo! Right now, the contractor has all the backups and all the data. I want to protect myself from a "single point of failure." She tried to backup to an external hard drive but it didn't work (I have no idea what commands she used). I'm hoping one of you "gurus" can suggest that she use the xx feature or share the PDF that explains how to do a copy/backup onto an external drive that could be mailed to me, removing the single point of failure. Hope that makes sense.
Your contractor just needs to do a "Save As", and select another location for the InDesign document, they can also "Package" the InDesign files and save or send them to you. You would need a CC account to access the TypeKit fonts.
As mentioned PDF is the easiest for viewing, but can't easily be changed.
A normally setup PC disk can't be written by a Mac and a normally set up Mac disk can't be read by a PC. So you first need to format the disk as exFAT; now both of you can at least use the disk. The contractor should package the design to make a new package on their hard drive, then drag that to the external disk. You will need the SAME release of InDesign so make sure you know what was used; if it is older than CS6 that is not available.
Do not accept a PDF alone, you won't be able to edit your property.
Require that the contractor uses only OTF fonts (or TTF). Other mac-only font type can cause you to have problems.
Require that all files have the correct extension added. Many Mac user don't use them.
Forbid the contractor to use any other letter than a to z A to Z 0 to 9 and - _ Never use /.:\ or any other extended character in the file's or folder's or directory's name as this can cause huge interplatform problems.
At the end the contractor has to package the file with all assets of all hidden content and also save an IDML and a PDF/X with bleed for you.
On Mac you can take a backup using Time Machine software. It's an inbuilt software included with your Mac. For that you need a hard drive at least same the size of your Mac, but it's better if it's twice the storage capacity of your Mac. You can take help through this link http://www.howali.com/2017/04/how-to-back-up-mac-to-external-hard-drive-time-machine.html to take back up of your book using Time Machine.
12
Replies
AdChoices