Joining page spreads

[Todd33298777nvc1]

I am working on a large project in InDesign. The document I'm working on has multiple chapters. To make the work easier to handle, I'm working on the project using Individual chapters. After I completed the first three chapters, I tried joining them all in a single file by adding each of the other two page spreads to the first chapter. Somehow, InDesign added the chapters together but staggered the results in an odd way. The last page of the first spread ended on the right side of the pages panel. InDesign placed the second spread at then end of the first spread but the first page of the second spread was also on the right side of the pages panel. There is an empty space where a page should be. I tried adding and removing pages but nothing seems to get rid of the gap. Any Idea what is going on here?

[kglad]

in the future, to find the best place to post your message, use the list here, https://community.adobe.com/

p.s. i don't think the adobe website, and forums in particular, are easy to navigate, so don't spend a lot of time searching that forum list. do your best and we'll move the post (like this one has already been moved) if it helps you get responses.

<"moved from using the community">

[Scott Falkner]

Can you describe what you are doing in detail? It sounds like you are moving pages between open documents, perhaps using the Move Pages command in the Pages panel. I’m also going to guess that the document you are copying the pages to has an odd number of pages.

If Document A starts on page 1 and ends on page 12 then the next page added from Document B will be page 13. Odd numbered pages are on the right. If Document B starts on an odd numbered page (perhaps you didn’t bother changing the numbering because you knew you would be merging the chapters) then what was page 1 will become page 13. Those are both odd numbered pages so they will both be right hand pages. This means your pages from Document B will end up where you expect.

If Document A ends on page 11 then the next page is page 12. Page 1 from Document B will become page 12, page 2 will become page 13, and so on. Each page in Document B will end op on the opposite side as you originally had them. If you want the next page to be page 12 then you can either set up Document B to start on an even numbered page so that the layout doesn’t shift, or you can accept the shift in hte layout and cleanup what you need to.

If you want each chapter to start on an odd numbered (right hand) page then first create a new section starting with the first page in each chapter and set the page number there before moving the pages to Document A.

In the Pages panel select the first page of the chapter then go to the flyout menu and select Numbering & Section Options…

[Steve Werner]

If your pages look like the first illustration below, the second section of pages may have a Start Section icon turned on (circled in red)::

Double-click the down-poining arrow icon to open the Numbering and Sections dialog (shown below)

UNCHECK the check mark at Start Section, and it should be corrected:

[Scott Falkner]

Steve,

I think you grokked this better than I did.

[Steve Werner]

We'll see. It's always hard to guess when there is no picture of the pages to go by!