How do I reorder/rearrange parent pages on InDesign?

[viastudio]

Every time I try to move a parent page, it applies the style rather than moving the page up or down. Please help!

[Frans v.d. Geest]

Move? In the upper part of the pages panel you try to move it up or down to order? I suspect you mean something different than 'move' a Parent page. Can you give us more info and maybe a screenshot?

[viastudio]

For example, if I wanted to move Parent J after Parent G.

[Peter Spier]

Make sure no document page is selected in the lower half of the panel before you rearrange the pages in the upper half.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

I can drag and drop them even if a doc page is selected, but the pane is very fussy about the position of the pointer, on or in between Parent page icons.

[James Gifford—NitroPress · Accepted solution]

I believe Parent pages are resolutely ordered alphabetically by their prefix. You would have to rename the page(s).

On experimentation, it seems they are ordered by order of creation. You can drag and drop them to a different order if you are careful to observe the "drop" line appearing at the selected location.

I can't generally think of a need or reason to re-order Parent pages, though. If you have many, you probably want an orderly naming system as well, which would accomplish what you're asking.

[viastudio]

This is correct. The parent name on the left must be selected to move, not the parent preview which causes the content overlap. Thank you for your help!

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Both the Parent and doc pages panes are very fussy little interfaces, with too many functions selected by micro-movement of the elements.

While reordering Parent pages is a niche need, I find it annoying almost hourly how hard it is to drag a Parent pair onto facing Doc pages... the drop point is about three pixels across.

[mk-will]

Sorry, but why do you want to do that?

What do you want to achieve?

[bettya29]

You can rename the parent pages. When pages are rearranged and "B parent" needs to move down to the Last parent page in the column, "Logo - parent" will  be best to be moved. Perhaps you didn't know that parent pages can be renamed with a 4 letter name.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

You cannot "move" Parent page assignments in the document page pane. You have to use one of the methods to assign a different Parent page to each document page, or group of pages, to change what parent is applied to what doc page.

You can do this by drag-and-drop or with a menu from the Parent page 'hamburger' menu at upper right.

[Laubender]

@viastudio said: "… The parent name on the left must be selected to move, not the parent preview which causes the content overlap. "

Hi together,

I also do struggle with the reordering of parent spreads ( parent pages ) in a document.

Recently had to do it with InDesign 2023 version 18.1 on a Mac.

Maybe it's only me, but it worked better with the PC version of InDesign and hardly on the Mac.

For some documents it's working, for some it's not.

Maybe this is a thing of screen resolution in combination with the size of the parent pages in the Pages panel?

FWIW:

Also tried "moving" parent spreads [Object masterSpread] with ExtendScript.

This object has no move() method unlike ordinary document spreads…

Thanks,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Expert )

[Fritz Hansen]

I am also having trouble reordering parent pages in the panel. It used to be easy to drag & drop them in a different order. I  was unable to drag & drop a week ago but then was able to when I tried later; now it isn't working again. There is a "move parent..." menu item, but it's grayed out for some reason, and drag & drop isn't working. Perhaps a bug? Why have a "move parent" item if you can't use it? 

Hmmm... I just opened a year-old ID file with several master pages (sorry, they were still called master pages a year ago) and tried dragging one to a different place in the panel. The vertical insertion line appeared momentarily between other parent pages but then was gone. 

InDesing 18.1

Mac OS 12.6.3 Monterey

27" iMac late 2015

[charborob]

The parent pages don't move at all. Drag and drop doesn't work if I try to reorganize their order. Worked perfectly on my (very) old version of InDesign. Am I doing something wrong?

InDesign 18.2.1

Mac OS 13.0 Ventura

24" iMac 2021

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

As noted, you have to drag the page names on the left. At appropriate points between the other page sets, a horizontal line will appear to show a drop point. Does this not work for you?

(If not, it may be a "reset preferences" issue, again.)

[charborob]

No, it doesn't work. When I select a parent page and try to move it, the cursor changes to a hand holding a page, and no horizontal line appears.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

That's one usual reponse to dragging the page icons, but not the page names. Did you try Barb's double-clicking on the name to select it first? (I can do it without that, but it may work somewhat differently in the Mac interface.)

[charborob]

Like I said in my previous post, I could reorder the master pages without problem on my old version of InDesign. I was doing it all the time. But with my new version, I just can't.

[joel30355638nzbt]

Hi, I was having the same problem but got it to work two ways...

First: right click on the parent > panel options > change parents size to jumbo > then try like other people have said, highligh the parent, drage and move to where you want it, inbetween the pages.

Second: doesn't resolve the problem but was a work around for me. Duplicate the parent page positioned in the location before you want the new parent > select all and copy from the page you want to move > on the new page you duplicated paste in place  > delete originally copied page.

Hope I've explained ok and it helps.

[Angela Roche]

Wow the Jumbo thing worked! Thank you! 🙏

[CJC Williams]

I'm having the same issue of not being able to reorder parent pages on a Mac running InDesign 19.2. Making the parent page icons small, medium or jumbo makes no difference, and neither does clicking on the name of the page instead of the icons.

I solved it by opening the document on a PC also running InDesign 19.2, which allowed me to drag and move the Parent pages as required very easily (you see a line appear in teh position to drop it, as discussed above). 

So anyone using Indesign on a Mac isn't going crazy, it just doesn't work

[turner111]

This is infuriating.
Reordering parent pages is nothing unusual, nor should it be impossible - which, in my case, it seems to be.

[Roy32815770ytke]

Ugh. I didn't seem to have this problem until recently. I thought it was me; why would Adobe make it impossible to move Parent pages? I can't foresee every single page I need to create, and I frequently create new and rearrange the parent pages. Not being able to do so, when we could before, is infuriating.

[Hayley23531447cidz]

I figured out an easy way. Right click from the "pages" panel to open settings > Panel Options... > Parents = size = jumbo. Then it's much easier to drag to reorder the pages. Just click, drag, then release your mouse when your cursor is right in between the pages where you want it to be. Make sure you release in the grey space, and not over top of another page or you'll apply the parent to that page. When the thumbnail size is set to "jumbo" you have way more room between pages to drop and reorder. Hope this helps! 

[Sebastian32381144cvaa]

What a UX failure. Everybody would understand it if there were a small line between the pages.