How to Quickly Insert Pages from One InDesign Document into Another

[Steve-Montreal]

Hello

I have two InDesign documents. 

A first (A) of 300 different pages and a second (B) of 1 page.

I want to insert the second document (B) after each of the 300 pages, for a total of 600 pages.

That is: A1-B-A2-B-A3-B-A4-B…. Up to….A299-B-A300-B

What would be the quickest method?

THANKS


<Title renamed by MOD>

[Steve Werner]

Write a script, or get someone to write a script. There is no built-in feature in InDesign to do it.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

Create PDFs of each file. Check out PDFsam Basic, a free open-source program. It can do an alternative mix of the pages. 

https://pdfsam.org/

[Willi Adelberger]

Put all INDD files into a book INDB and export from there all you need. 

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

Put all INDD files into a book INDB and export from there all you need. 

By @Willi Adelberger

How this will mix pages from both files? 

[rob day]

Hi @Eugene Tyson , Think you need pages[i] not pages[0]

insertDoc.pages[i].duplicate(LocationOptions.AFTER, mainDoc.pages[addPageLocation]);

Also if the docs are facing pages the allow shuffle prefs will matter, and you might need to consider the masterspreads contents.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@rob day

But doc "B" is the one page document, and this single page should be inserted after every page in the doc "A"?

[rob day]

Thanks missed that.

If the doc is facing the shuffle prefs still need to be checked, and does B have masterpage items?

[rob day]

With a facing page document without setting shuffle prefs I get this before and after:

With this:

var mainDoc = app.activeDocument; // Assuming this is Document A
//make sure to allow shuffling
mainDoc.spreads.everyItem().allowPageShuffle = true;
mainDoc.documentPreferences.properties = {allowPageShuffle:true};

var insertDoc = app.documents.itemByName("B.indd"); // Open Document B separately

//bring any masterpageitems?
var mpi = insertDoc.pages[0].masterPageItems;
for (var i = 0; i < mpi.length; i++){
    mpi[i].override(insertDoc.pages[0])
};   


var addPageLocation = 0;  
var docLength = mainDoc.pages.length;  // Start with the original length of Document A
var p 
for (var i = 0; i < docLength; i++) {

    // Duplicate the page from Document B to Document A after each page
    p = insertDoc.pages[0].duplicate(LocationOptions.AFTER, mainDoc.pages[addPageLocation]);
    //remove the insert page’s section?
    p.appliedSection.remove()

    // Update the page location to skip over the newly added page from Document B
    addPageLocation += 2;
}

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

Sometimes I think that scripters only know script-based solutions. 😁 I was able to combine two 1000-page documents with an alternative mix using PDFsam Basic in less than a minute.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Yeah. But it depends on what you need - just print - or edit something afterwards... 

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

True enough!

[Eugene Tyson]

Great you mentioned this. 

And I've done something similar in the past but not sure how or remember when or what I used. 

I think someone have me a script up use in acrobat. 

Since you have this option I thought I'd try offer the way I may have approached it before. 

It's a good suggestion, along with the book file. 

I think there is many ways to do it. And great we all come together to share experience

[Eugene Tyson]

Try it out on a duplicate set of files - I'm not the best scripter

Found a script here that looks like what you want

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/57545582/indesign-script-to-add-a-page-to-every-given-page

Haven't tested it properly but I suspect this might work better with a tweak 

var mainDoc = app.activeDocument; // Assuming this is Document A
var insertDoc = app.documents.itemByName("B.indd"); // Open Document B separately

var addPageLocation = 0;  
var docLength = mainDoc.pages.length;  // Start with the original length of Document A

for (var i = 0; i < docLength; i++) {

    // Duplicate the page from Document B to Document A after each page
    insertDoc.pages[0].duplicate(LocationOptions.AFTER, mainDoc.pages[addPageLocation]);

    // Update the page location to skip over the newly added page from Document B
    addPageLocation += 2;
}

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@Eugene Tyson

It should work - I'm on my phone so can't test your code.

But just in case, in situations like this - it's better to iterate backward. 

[FRIdNGE]

Correction:

    var myPage = insertDoc.pages[0].duplicate(LocationOptions.AFTER, mainDoc.pages[addPageLocation]);
    myPage.appliedSection.remove();

(^/)  The Jedi