How to Set Up a Main Parent Page Template for a Multi-Chapter Book with Different Background Color

[Corey26246964tdmj]

Hi All

I'm designing a large coffee table book and was wondering how to set up a Main parent page temple file that has multiple templates with 3 different background colors. I have all 16 chapters as individual InDesign files.

Help???? And thank you.

Corey

<Title renamed by MOD>

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

I'm not sure I get the full extent of your question, but I'll note this is very basic stuff; you might profit from a few of the help and tutorial pages more than a summary explanation here —

• https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/parent-pages.html
• https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/creating-book-files.html#synchronize_book_documents

— seem relevant.

But to address what seems to be the core of your question, you will probably want to set up one pair of facing Parent pages that are suitable for front material, any leading text, etc. and do not have your color elements, or have smaller ones.

From there, duplicate that set and create your first set with a colored background, accents, whatever for your content pages.

Duplicate that set, and change the colors, in as many iterations as you need.

You can now apply any of these Parent pages to any document pages in your book using the menu in the Pages pane (the three-line or hamburger icon), or by dragging the desired Parent to each doc page icon there.

Once you have one chapter set up exactly as you like it, you will probably want to combine them all in an InDesign Book. From there, you can synchronize changes between them, initially to add that set of Parent pages to all the others. (This is a somewhat fussy and detailed process to avoid copying the wrong updates to other chapters; read the above link carefully.)

You can also do it without a Book structure, by importing Parent pages and styles one by one from your "template" chapter to each of the others.

If that, plus the links, isn't enough of an answer — ask away!

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

May I suggest that you don't "duplicate" the other parent pages, but create based-on parents.

For the OP, to do this, set up your generic parent with all the elements you need (header, footer, background frame, etc.).

Create a NEW parent page and use the based-on setting. 

Override any elements you want to edit, such as the color of the background frame by Cntl-Shift-clicking/Cmd-Shift-clicking on the element.

Repeat for each variant parent page.

[Abhishek Rao]

Hello @Corey26246964tdmj,

I hope you are doing well.

We wanted to follow up on the status of your issue. Were you able to resolve it by following our expert's advice? If so, please share the solution that worked for you, as it may help others in the community experiencing a similar issue.

Feel free to update the discussion if you need any further assistance.

Thank you,

Abhishek Rao

^AR