Moving pages in InDesign without altering their page numbering

[Soterra320396490a2z]

In InDesign, I am instructed by someone to rearrange a 16 page document as a printers spread without using the print booklet option. To do this, I have to move and rearrange the pages to the following:

Page 16 is adjacent to page 1

Page 2 is adjacent to page 15

Page 14 is adjacent to page 3

Page 4 is adjacent to page 13

Page 12 is adjacent to page 5

Page 6 is adjacent to page 11

Page 10 is adjacent to page 7

Page 8 is adjacent to page 9

Thing is, if I try to move the pages, it will alter all of the page numbers including the one I moved (example: moving page 16 to be adjacent to page 1 on the left side will cause page 16 to become page 1 and every other pages get renumbered accordingly). I want the pages to retain their page numbering when I move and reorganize them into a printers spread format. The one who instructed me to do so demonstrated how to do it manually a few days ago, but I am struggling to remember how to do it.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

You don't set up a "printer spread" — a process known as "imposition" — within a document. Not usually and not in 'best practice.'

You can export a document to booklet-page, press-ready layout using either print features in InDesign, which are not as good as they should be, or in Acrobat Pro, which works much better. Ask away if you can't figure out those two processes from looking at the print and export menus in each.

There is a question of why you're being asked to do this... it's not usually the designer's job, and suggesting it be done by shuffling the document pages smacks of some ignorance about the process. If this is for in-house printing (if a secretary or assistant or the like needs to run off booklets to be stapled or such), an export to a booklet-imposition PDF will create the print file they need. If this is for commercial, trade printing... a printer should never ask for an imposed file, as anyone with reasonably modern equipment and practices both can, and usually prefers to, take single pages and do their own imposition layout to make best use of their press and bindery processes.

Does that point you in the right direction?

[Willi Adelberger]

Instead of using Page Number markers use a paragraph style with autonumbers on the page and convrt numbers into text befor moving pages.

[Lukas Engqvist · Accepted solution]

If you must then you can make each page a section and set the page number of that section. But as mentioned imposition is the printers job. If you are a small shop/or making a home booklet then use the Print Booklet feature and it will do just that for you.

Another option is to leave the master document as you would read it and place the InDesign pages in a new InDesign file, your imposed spreads (Yes you can place InDesign files in Indesign Files). The reason why you would want to keep your source file is because you may want a Reading PDF of an EPUB. Your imposed spreads can be updated by relinking to anouther file if this is a repeating task.

[Randy Hagan]

Are you asking how do you move the page numbers without having them change? If that's the question, it's a simple, two-step process.

1. Get your Arrow/Selection tool. Hold down the Cmd+Shift keys (Mac) or the Ctrl+Shift keys (Windows) and click on the page number. This "lifts" the element off the parent page and puts it on your document page. This lets you edit that element for only that particular document page. This is important.

For the sake of illustration, let's say we're doing this to page 14. Now when you or I look at it, it clearly shows it's page 14. But when InDesign looks at it, it sees a hypertext marker that's designed to reflect which page of your InDesign document it sits on. Which is great when it sits on page 14, but when you start building printers' spreads like your mentor wants, that number changes to page 5 or whatever page it sits on when doing your printers' spreads, which should sit across from page 3 on the two-page spread.

2. To make that page 14 forevermore, get your Text tool. Highlight the page number, and type in what read as 14 with the number 14.

You and I don't see any difference. It read as 14 before, and it still reads as 14 now. But InDesign no longer reads it a the hypertext marker that's designed to reflect which page of your InDesign document it sits on. It's just text now that says 14. And no matter where you put it in your InDesign document now, (though it should go to the left of page 3, on the third printers' spread) it will read as page 14 forevermore.

Hope this helps. If you need more direction on building printers' spreads than fixing pagination issues, come on back and we'll help as we can.

Randy

[Soterra320396490a2z]

Alright, so taking the advice of giving each individual page their own section and having their page start with their own page number did the trick. Thank you for the advice.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Assuming you have a rationale for doing the imposition in the document. Once again, this is generally considered poor practice and would have to have an exceptional set of circumstances to use over the other page-imposition methods.

But it's your project and we'll assume you know what's best.

[rob day]

I am instructed by someone

Hi @Soterra320396490a2z Who? Your printer? And why not use Print Booklet? Print Booklet is not the ideal way to do imposition, but it would surely be better than changing sections in a reader document.

Also, you can Export normal reader pages and your printer can output imposed printer spreads from Acobat Reader’s Booklet feature which would also be far better than changing sections.

[Peter Spier]

There are actually a number of scripts already written for this. Google imposition script InDesign and you find several.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

As others pointed out - it should be done by your printer - you should just supply PDF with correct Bleed space. 

But if you really need to do it yourself - here is my "tutorial" - hope it helps:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/print-booklet-in-indesign-not-user-friendly/m-p/...