InDesign Printing Wrong Page

[sarapia777]

Greetings.

I am printing a 104p book, 6x9, double sided, no facing pages (book will be spiral bound). Yesterday I successfully printed one book. Today, I tried to make a second copy, printed all odd pages, but when attempting to print the even pages, Indesign insists on beginning on P4 rather than on P2. P2 is blank and I have "print blank pages" checked but it insists on printing P4 on the back of P1. I thought I could work around it by printing pp 1-3 manually and starting the printing with P4, but now - guess what - it's printing P4, then P8. 

I am not using the "print booklet" option, by the way. 

I have deleted my print presets a couple times, also rebooted computer, InDesign is up to date.

I don't understand why it worked perfectly yesterday but not today.

Going nuts. At it for hours now.

What am I missing? 

Thank you.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Complete hack and neither an answer nor a solution, but... put a text frame with some text set to White or None on P2. That might bypass whatever faulty logic is at work while better answers and such come along.

Wait... "no facing pages." I believe 'facing pages' does quite a few things with document structure, more than just give you page pairs in the Pages pane. What you have, and what you want, is facing pages, structurally. You don't need to have mirrored margins or layout or spread contents or anything, but you do need to tell ID that the output is for even/odd facing pages.

Switch on Facing Pages, touch up any layout issues, and try again.

[sarapia777]

Yes, except it worked perfectly yesterday (as it should have) while set up as I described above.

When I select facing pages the numbering doesn't make sense at all. 

P1 - single page

P3 - double page

etc. 

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

This doesn't make any sense, though. I suggest you have some structural/setup flaw in your document that is causing the problem, but wasn't 'broken' yesterday. Possibly something as simple as closing and reopening the doc caused page order to become scrambled.

The difference between facing pages and no facing pages is, fundamentally speaking, just how ID displays pages in spreads. (Although I still suspect more complex things are happening under the hood, those should be all but invisible in most projects.)

If you have 104 pages that are to print on 52 sheets of paper, you have facing pages. There is no reason to use single-page layout. If you are seeing wonky page numbering, it's in your Parent page setup etc., not something fundamental in ID.

[sarapia777]

I tried "facing pages" but it still starts at p 4. 

Will now try white text.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Can you post the file, or a dummy-text version of it that exhibits this flawed behavior?

[sarapia777]

Not sure what you mean by dummy text. I can send the entire pdf file, is that what you mean?

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

Make PDF and print from Acrobat? 

[Peter Spier]

Did you change from logical to absoulte page numbering (or vice versa), perhaps? Is there a new section start involved?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

A screen shot of the first dozen or so pages in the Pages pane would help here.

[sarapia777]

how can I take a screen shot of all those pages?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Use your system's screen snip tool. (In Win10/11 it's Shift-Win-S). This snip from my setup, for example, shows a bunch of useful information about how pages, sections, numbering etc. is set up:

[sarapia777]

Yes, sorry, I was confused. I missed the part about "pages panel"

[sarapia777]

[sarapia777]

Not that I know of but anything is possible. Where do I find logical/absolute setting. No new section that I know of. 

[Peter Spier]

Your screen grab shows thet you hav'nt got a new section start and therefore your absolute and logical numbers are the same, so that's not the issue.

I'd try the standard procedure for files that suddenly misbehave: Export to .idml, open that and save as a new .indd with a new name and see if the problem is fixed.

[sarapia777]

I just spent a couple hours on chat support. ugh. we created test files galore. copied, pasted, same problem. we created a brand new file that worked. my older books print just fine. I've been working on this for at least 6 hours.

The agent suddenly abandoned me with no explanation, so I go back and the new person wants to hear the story all over again...I'm going to kill myself. 

Now I'm told someone will call me.

[sarapia777]

and when I say we created a brand new file that worked, alas, it didn't contain my book, it was totally new. In summary: odd pages print fine, older books print fine, a new unrelated file prints fine, but any variation of my book will simply not print the even pages correctly. Starts on p4, then p8, then p10, every single time. someone shoot me.

[sarapia777]

I did export to .idml but I did not save as new .indd, will try that, immediately before I jump out my window.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Okay, I don't claim to have a complete handle on (all these) problems, but Adobe Help, while very good, does tend to work through things one... step... at... a... time because that's how effective tech support works. Repeating steps, getting disconnected, etc. is an unfortunate part of the process.

It seems clear to me that your original file is corrupted, or there is some subtle pagination/numbering parameter we haven't suggested yet. The only way to solve it for sure would be to upload it for one of us here to open and tinker with. That was why I suggested a "dummy text" version, with filler content, so that there's no issue of sharing material you may not want to.

But... down there at the end... the purge/fix problem has two steps. You have to save or export to IDML, then close the file and open that IDML file separately, then (usually) save it as a regular INDD file under a different name from the first. Just saving the IDML file does nothing; you need to open that file, which in effect rebuilds the document from the sparest elements, often replacing or repairing broken parts.

Try that full export-and-open cycle and see what happens.

[sarapia777]

Thanks, I did try that export, rename thing, didn't work.

I don't mind sharing my file. How do I do that?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

To keep it smallish, I'd save a copy, delete all but, say, the first dozen pages, and see if the problem with those first few pages still persists in that file. Then attach it to a message here, and we'll attack it like rabid gophers. 🙂

You can just attach the whole thing, too, if that's easier.

[sarapia777]

Attack away!

[Peter Spier]

I printed odds, then evens, to PDF to save paper. Worked fine here.

Double check the printer settings.

[sarapia777]

Peter, I was able to do the same, worked fine as PDF. When you say double check printer settings, can you be more specific? I have looked at setting in InD, also in my printer, and I have not been able to find anything strange,  and I don't remember changing anything. Where do you suggest I look? 

Also, I deleted printer presets in InD and in printer, created all new ones, closed InD, rebooted computer, problem persists when printing to paper.