Facing Pages Issue in Lead INDD File for EPUB Export

[mpkadobe]

Using macbookair OS14.6 ID 20.0.1

I have a book laid out with 6 indd files that are linked with one indb file. The book is a long novel and was laid out with facing pages. I want to export a flowable epub document in a single page format — not a spread format. I went through each of the 6 indd and in File > Document Setup > deselected Facing Pages. This worked on 5 of the 6 indd files. They are now just single pages. But the lead indd file, no matter what I do, even when I deselect Facing Pages, remains in facing pages format.

Any idea what is going wrong and how to fix i?

<Title renamed by MOD>

[Abhishek Rao]

Hi @mpkadobe

Thanks for reaching out!  

Could you confirm the exact macOS version you're using? Also, is this issue occurring only with the lead INDD file or with all your InDesign files?  

To fix the issue with the lead file:  
1. Open the file and go to File > Document Setup.  
2. Deselect Facing Pages again, then click OK.  
3. If the layout still appears as facing pages, try exporting the file to IDML (File > Save As > InDesign Markup Language), then reopen the IDML file in InDesign. This can often resolve stubborn formatting issues.  
4. Once reopened, check and deselect Facing Pages again if needed.  

Let me know if this resolves the issue or if further troubleshooting is required!  

Best,
Abhishek  

[mpkadobe]

Mac OS is 14.6

Only the lead indd file of the six has trouble. All the rest reformated to single page when I deselected "Facing Pages"

[Abhishek Rao]

Hi @mpkadobe,

Thank you for confirming! Since the issue is specific to the lead INDD file, try these steps:

1. Create a new document with the same settings (single-page layout). Copy the content from the lead file and paste it into the new document.

2. Export the lead file to IDML and reopen it. This often resolves file-specific issues.

3. Ensure no master pages are overriding the single-page layout.

Let me know if this works or if you need further assistance!

Best,
Abhishek

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

So, to be clear, this has nothing (yet) to do with EPUB export?

I can only suggest that the first INDD file is somehow corrupted; try exporting it to IDML and re-opening that file, then saviing it under a new name as an INDD file. That can fix structural problems and other glitches.

But in more general, this shouldn't matter for EPUB export to reflowable. EPUB doesn't care much about the page formatting of source documents; it exports to a single long text flow (or a series of them) and discards page layout, headers, footers and the like. You could have completely different page layouts in all five of your files and see no (or very little) difference in the exported doc. (Note that is is not quite as simple if you have images and the like; source page size does affect the result for those to some degree. I'm going on novel == all text, here.)

I'll also note that this project may be much easier to manage as a single file, not a Book structure. The only good reasons to use a Book are when chapters need to be managed separately (as by different authors/editors, or for other focused reasons), or when the whole project is so large that separate files make it easier to manage and less prone to corruption and document faults. But "large" is a slippery term and usually refers to books with complex formatting, images, tables, notes etc. that make each component file large and complicated. A novel, with flowing text and probably no more than a dozen styles, can easily be 5-600 pages long or more and not be bumping InDesign's limits. Breaking it up into a Book adds very little and makes things like styles and export management a significant degree more complicated, without adding much in the way of improvement.

So: consider just collapsing this all into one INDD file, if all the editing and so forth is done and there's no longer any good reason to have chapters or sections as separate elements. If not, try the purge technique above to fix the first file. A third option would be to create an empty file (copy part 2, for example, and delete all its contents) and copy/paste all of the content of part 1 into the new "frame."

But if you just do a test EPUB export, you may have many minor issues to resolve, but I think you'll find the facing-pages/single-pages layouts are irrelevant.

[mpkadobe]

Thank you for pointing out that flowable epub should not be set in "spreads" or "single" format. I had already exported  flowable epub test files many times, and always found them to be in spread format when I looked at them with Books or Kindle reader on my mac desktop. I now realize that if I make the Books viewing window more narrow, or send the epub file to my iphone and look at it with Books on the phone, the same epub file can be read as a single page layout rather than spread layout.

Newbie mistake. Thank you for pointing it out.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

It's not a mistake, exactly, and it's not that InDesign projects for EPUB should or should not be set up one way or another. It's a little confusing, if you haven't done a whole project cycle, to learn that only the "content" of the source document is exported, without any of the structure. But once you get that, you can do many things in and with a source doc in a powerful layout and composition tool like ID that are not necessarily directly connected to the result.

For example, you can use styles and text format to closely approximate the end look and format, or you can use something that's easier to manage as an editor/writer, all the way to something that looks a lot like a traditional manuscript. (I don't recommend setting things up to be that extreme, but it can be liberating to be able to work on something with simpler or better-organized content than an exact visual replica.)

So you can work on single pages, or facing spreads, or with any cotent layout and formatting suits you for those purposes, and let the export strip away nonessentials and recompose the formatting to something ideal for reflowable e-book display and reading. And not have to worry about all the structure and scaffolding and technical details, because with a correctly set up source doc, ID and its export will take care of all that for you.

But the cumulative evidence is that nearly every first-timer is surprised to find that EPUB is not just another variant of print or export to a rigid page image like PDF, and it can take a few small conceptual leaps to learn how to get the most out of the platform/model/medium.

[Laura Brady]

If you are exporting to reflowable EPUB, the facing pages won't matter and doesn't not need to be corrected in the source file. If you are exporting to fixed-layout, you can disable spreads at export. That said, I would strongly encourage you to avoid the FXL format for a novel.