I use InDesign for lots of different things, but the main thing I use it for now is being the author/editor/typsetter/graphic designer of an ~900 page textbook. It has been very painful, and required lots of advice from the experts in this forum, but I have finally got it working. While the process for naming, backup and versioning that I have adopted is specific to this unusual use case, there might be elements of it that others think worth adopting, which is why I'm posting it; your mileage may vary. I will be very interested to see the replies and the good suggestions in them for different use cases.
- Naming: See the above screenshot. My filenames consist of several parts. They are designed to make my life easier when I'm looking at a Windows File Explorer or equivalent file display. (I use Directory Opus instead of Windows File Explorer, it's a lovely replacement for File Explorer. The screenshot above is Directory Opus.) The parts are:
- Textbook Name: the textbook's title is Appalachian Search and Rescue and I've adopted AppSAR as an abbreviation. So, all of the chapter, volume and other files start with AppSAR. After a hyphen as a separator, next is the:
- Document Number: Arabic numerals for chapters, and Roman numerals. Some files, such as "Chapter Template" and "Library" don't have numerals. And some, such as "Stuff to Copy" and some .icml files don't have document numbers. Next, after a hyphen, is the:
- Title:
- Chapter Title: For the chapters, it's the name of the chapter (sometimes abbreviated).
- Volume Front Matter: for the front matter for the volumes, which includes a Table of Contents for the entire volume, and for the first volume the Introduction and Preface, it's simply "Front-Matter." These are documents, not Book Panels/Book Files:
- Book Files/Book Panels: for these .indb files, they are titled for the volume whose document files they contain, for exmple, "AppSAR-Volume-I.indb"
- Other Stuff: (other files, such "Stuff to Copy" and some .icml files to make sure I have the same boxed text in each of several documents, don't have systematic names, because they don't need to.)
- The above naming conventions make it easier for me to do:
- Versioning: Versioning, in this context of "Indesign doesn't have builtin versioning" means using the above naming conventions to, fairly painlessly, save dated versions of your documents and be able to revert to them if you do something terribly, terribly bad with your current version. Like making it so you can't open it in InDesign without InDesign crashing. (Yes, this is the voice of bitter experience.) If you look at the above screenshot, you can see dated backup versions of some of the chapters. They have the same name as the current file, but with a date appended to them, in -yyyy-mm-dd format, such as in "AppSAR-1-Short-Term-Survival-2024-07-31.indd." Why, you might ask, put this in the filename since files contain date information? Simple. It's soooo much easier to see dates when they are in the filename. Here is a process for easily creating and archiving such copies, with screenshots. And, you need a unique filename for each version. And, if you do it this way, and keep the files sorted alphabetically, the versions are right under the working file in date order.
- File > Save a Copy: To create a version, use the InDesign File menu to Save a Copy:
You will note that this wants to save this simply with the word "copy" in the filename instead of the date you want. To rename this file to the date, here is a sneaky shortcut to save typing. In the file display above, click on the filename of "AppSAR-2-The-Environment-2024-07-31.indd" and the dialog box shows you that you've about save save your version over "AppSAR-2-The-Environment-2024-07-31.indd" which is not what you want. Instead, you insert your cursor right before the period in the filename, backspace a bit, and type in today's date, so you now see the right filename under which to save today's version:
All you have to do is click "Save" and you've saved today's version with the right date on it.
- One problem with this is that your folder tends to fill up with dated backup files. The way to deal with this clutter – look at the very first screenshot in this post – is to, from time to time, drag older versions to that "z-Backups" folder you can see near the top of the screenshot. Why is it called "z-Backups" rather than just "Backups"? Simple. That way, when you have your folder sorted alphabetially, it appears at the bottom of your subfolder list, so that you don't have to drag versions as far to drop them in that subfolder.
- File > Save As: Once you have saved your dated versoin, there is one other thing you may want to do. I do this every time I save a dated version. With your original, current, undated file open in InDesign, do a "File > Save As" and save over your current file. That's right, save over your current file. Why? Because this cuts down on your file size, and improves InDesign performance when next you edit your file. There is all sorts of undo and other metadate that accumulate in InDesign files and this is a way to clean out that cruft and keep your working file nice and shiny clean. Remember, if you need to do an undo that you just eliminated, you have a dated backup copy.
- In addition to versioning, I secure all my data by multiple means of:
- File > Save a Copy: To create a version, use the InDesign File menu to Save a Copy:
- Backup: Having PTSD from data loss in the CP/M days, back before MS-DOS or Windows, I am a belt, suspenders, and second belt and suspenders sort of backup person. I backup all of my data files in several separate ways:
- Laptop <> Desktop: I have both a big-iron Windows workstation with a 40" curved ultrawide monitor, and a fairly high-end laptop for when I travel. They are both connected to our house Ethernet and thence via FiOS to the wider world. Whenever I am working on my desktop, and I walk away for a while to do housecleaning or eat a meal, I use GoodSync (wonderful program) to sync all of my data files between them. That way, if the power goes out, I can keep working on my laptop and then sync back to my desktop once the power is back on. I also sync before I leave for work or for a trip so I always have all of my data with me in editable form.
- TrueImage: I use Acronis TrueImage to, nightly, back up my desktop to a portable hard drive. From this image I can restore if my SSD dies. Every month or so I rotate one of my two backup portable hard drives to my locker at work.
- SOS Online Backup AKA Infrascale Cloud Backup: Early every morning, both my laptop and my desktop do a file backup. To my mind, Infrascale is expensive but worth it: the ability to quickly find and restore a file you accidentally deleted last week is almost priceless.
Please poke holes in this system and suggest improvments and variations for other use cases.
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Replies
Versioning: Versioning, in this context of "Indesign doesn't have builtin versioning" means using the above naming conventions to, fairly painlessly, save dated versions of your documents
By @keithconover
Just in case: I wonder if you're aware of the built-in File History system on Windows that will do all this for you (similar to Time Machine on Mac)?
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