Indb setup

[ana_3947]

Hello everyone,

I have a project of multi-brand manuals (one manual each), however, I have being duplicating books and its respective chapters (indds) for a new brand. 
I am now organizing a common strutucture that all the brands use and pull these indds in the respective book of that brand. But by doing this, all the information of the foot are not correct with the dedicated chapters, meaning page/date and brandname. 
I have made this change so the maintaince of the manuals specially in the common structure would be 1-time thing across 9 brands instead, 1 each manual and to become more productive.

But how can I change the date/page and brandname without changing the common indds? Is there a way to define in the common indds or in the indb to overlap that information and put the same as the dedicated ones?

Thanks for the help

[Peter Kahrel]

Use text variables instead of literal text in those footers. Then you update the variables in one of the INDDs and use the book's Synchronise function to update all the INDDs in the book.

[ana_3947]

Thank for the feedback. I will test although I have a feeling that once sync with the brand, with sync as well with others that use the same indds.

[Mike Witherell]

Hi Ana,

Another feature of InDesign to investigate would be Edit > Place and Link

https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/linked-content.html

[ana_3947]

Thank You for the feedback.
I will take a look.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

You could try...

Start an InCopy workflow. (You don't need to actually use IC.)

Export the common text to IC files.

Import the IC files to the other documents.

If you check out the document in either ID or IC, you can update the other manuals.

That way, you can keep separate books and even use different type styles (but with the same name) in each manual if necessary.

Another option is to use conditional text and put all the content into one manual/book. Hide/show conditions as needed for different manuals.