How to change page size across documents in a INDB book project?

[ppppppppgonzaga]

Dear community, 

I'm working in a 400 pages book project made of 12 indd files united as a indb book project. The book is full of images and texts that have different sizes. The book is almost ready but due to cuts in the planned budget, we'll have to slightly adjust its format from 23x21cm to 22x21cm.

Is there a way to change the page size across all documents of a book? What would be the possibilities?

[Barb Binder]

Hi @ppppppppgonzaga:

In a book environment, you can modify one chapter and then use that chapter's settings to update all of the other chapters. See Synchronize Book Documents on this page: https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/creating-book-files.html for details on how this works.

In your scenario, change the parent pages to the new paper size in one file (and potentially the margins), and then use Synchronize Options to only sync the Parent Pages to the other (selected files) in the book window. To play it safe, open all of the chapters first, that way, if things go awry, you can just close the files without saving them. Or, work a copy of the original chapters. 

Edit: depending on how the file was set up, you likely need to invoke the Adjust Layout command as well. 

https://helpx.adobe.com/in/indesign/using/adjust-layout.html

~Barb

[Luke Jennings3]

A quick & dirty option is to re-size the final PDF in Acrobat using a preflight profile. You can either scale proportionately, or distort to the new size. If there is bleed involved, you might need export to PDF without marks and no inside bleed, before re-sizing, then place the re-sized PDF into a new InDesign file (using a script). Tools> Print Production> Preflight> Fixups. Note, to edit the preflight profile, you first need to duplicate it from the Options fly-out menu.

[ppppppppgonzaga]

Thanks, Luke,

I'm considering doing something like this, importing the indesign or a pdf into a new document with the right size, and rebuilding some elements, like the page navigation. I think I've never used a script in indesign, but after reading your suggestion, I made a quick search and found this one, and sounds like it might help a lot:  https://creativepro.com/placing-all-the-pages-of-a-pdf-inside-indesign/ .

[ppppppppgonzaga]

I've created a new book and documents with different a different setup for the margins and with elements like numbering and running titles.

Then, saved the old documents without those elements and placed them in the new documents with some offset and adjusted to 96.8% its original size using the multiplage importer. 

There are a few bleeding pages in the book, and those I'm placing manually in the new documents.

I feel it could have been done in a simpler way, but it worked fine and I'm thrilled to have been introduced in the scripting world — I have no idea how I've lived so many years using indesign without the scripts!

[ppppppppgonzaga]

Hi Barb, thanks a lot for answering 🙂

This was my very first thought and I've tried changing the Parent Pages size, but it wouldn't make a difference, not even in the chapter itself. I'll give another (more careful) try, after reading about the Adjust Layout command.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

If your margins allow it, you can simply ask the printer to adjust the page size during imposition. A 0.5 cm off of each side is a lot, so the margins would need to be pretty wide.