How to insert page and shuffle spread to work?

[Bec Mac]

Hello

I have 48 pages in a 25 spread document. I'm trying to add a page after page 2. It will add the page but it won't shuffle the rest of the document. I have mucked around with "allow pages to shuffle and allow spread to shuffle. I can't seem to work it out. I've watched countless videos. Help welcome, thanks Bec.

[Eugene Tyson]

You have page 1 as a left hand page - and page 3 is a right hand page

Traditionally odd numbers are on the right hand side.

If you want odd page 3 on the left hand page you'd have to drag it back over the line.

If this is unintended - then you need a blank page where page 1 is - as there has to be something backing this page. 

Best bet is to get some sheets of paper and fold them into a booklet and number the pages. 

You will see how it works.

[Peter Spier]

When you see the brackets around page numbers in the Pages Panel that means the spread itself is set not to shuffle. That setting would have been required to force the odd numbers on the left pages, which is against convention for documents that read left-to-right.  If you want to keep those particular spreads together you must add or remove pages in multiples of two up until the last such non-shuffling spread, or change the page order if the locked spread does not have to appear exactly in that position, such as for a two-page chart.

I see also that you have two sections that start on page 04 and that is going to cause some confusion to both the reader and InDesign itself so you should fix that.

[Bec Mac]

thanks for your reply, though I'm not interested in convention, my document is physically reading beautifully, and the physical page numbers are exactly where I want them, however, I can't explain the layout in the pages panel, which will indeed stuff up when the printers get hold of the document, even though it looks perfect online. Previously, my brackets that were shown (when I clicked on them it was ticked to shuffle) I have spent way too much time on this, I didn't think it would be this hard! Learning the entire gamet of Ai was a tonne easier than understanding stupid page numbers in Id, I'm lost!

[abuse removed by moderator]

[Eugene Tyson]

Well you're trying to force InDesign to do something it's not designed to do - in a nutshell.

Traditionally odd numbers are on the right.

You want them on the left - that's fine.

Professionally printing companies will find it weird but it's completely workable - I've done it myself at least half a dozen times.

It looks like you figured it out - but InDesign doesn't like it because it's not the norm.

It's not easy to do it - because it's not the way it's supposed to be.

So you have to fiddle with it to get it to work.