How to view a the full Book in InDesign without printing the book or saving the book to a pdf?

[TestriteVisual]

I'm just get started using the BOOK feature, and in the past when I needed to compile 10 pages together I would just create a 10 page .indd and then link each 1 page .indd to a single page in the 10 page file. Learning now that I can essentially do this quicker by simply making a BOOK and adding in the files, how can I actually view and be able to scroll page by page through the BOOK file without printing or saving the book to a pdf? Normally with a 10 page .indd I can just scroll through and zoom in/out to check the overall visual flow from page to page and catch any typos, etc, but I don't see how I can simply just VIEW the book. Thanks for any help on this.

[Laubender · Accepted solution]

Hi @TestriteVisual ,

that's not possible in one go.

You could open all the documents of a book file, as long as there are not too many, and go from doc to doc scrolling the spreads.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Expert )

[TestriteVisual]

Gotcha, ok thanks for letting me know

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Uwe's answer is correct: you can only use the Book menu to select individual documents, not view them as a whole.

ID Books are usually to combine relatively large documents, or separately authored/managed ones (so that one author can work on each chapter, or other changes can be managed without disturbing one common document). Are you sure a Book is the right structure for ten one-page docs? There are other ways to manage small but complex documents, such as by placing the individual INDD files in a single combining one.

Just want to make sure you aren't introducing unnecessary complexity that then needs more complexity to get past. It's easy to misuse the Book feature by "over managing" the project with it.

[TestriteVisual]

Got it, ok thanks. Up to now I've been linking on indd doc to page 1, then linking another indd doc to page 2, etc for my +10 page compiled indd files. To me it makes sense to use the book in this case, since this next one might be around 100 pages long so, i think it will be quickest to just add the separate indd files to a BOOK, with the understanding that, I'll just need to run the "Export Book to PDF" in order to view the complete file. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything as far as some type of PREVIEW.

[Robert Tkaczyk]

What exactly are you trying to achieve? Why can't you have all the contents in one INDD doc - instead of separate files? 

[TestriteVisual]

I'm looking to compile 100+ separate (1 page each) indd file into one. Based the other replies, using the BOOK feature sounds good, but I've learned that you cannot preview the full book only view it once exported to PDF which is fine. I also need to have each page/file retain the individual file names, so in this case building it in one file would not allow for exported individual pages each with a different file name, without some scripting I would imagine.

[Robert Tkaczyk]

Why do you need to have individual INDD files?

Will be much easier - and quicker 😉 - to help you if you describe your end goal? 

[TestriteVisual]

The individual files need to get exported as individual pdf for customer to only download the one they need. The compiled 100+ pages is just for internal reference.

[Robert Tkaczyk]

Then it would be much easier to export your INDD file into separate PDFs.