Muddle over book threading

[m5heath]

Oh dear - I seem to have got myself into a muddle over the threading of my 190 page book. I have inserted pages and deleted pages but that didn't seem to work and now I have turned on the 'show threads' option and my pages seem to be threading all over the place. Is there a way I can re-thread the entire book so that everything threads properly from one page to the next?

[Peter Spier]

Can you clarify what you were trying to achieve by rearranging pages and what you mean by re-thread properly? Some screen captures might be helpful.

Changing page order has no effect, as you 've seen, on how text is threaded between frames. If you want to physically move a block of text to a new position in the thread you really need to use cut/paste.

That said, there are scripts to break apart text threads in various ways which would allow you to rearrange the threaded frames and re-sort them and re-thread in the current page order, but this is only practical if the frames (pages) you are moving are complete self-contained blocks, no text strings that break across pages that are not contiguous.

[m5heath]

Peter, first thank you very much for responding. I have been adding the front matter of the book. Some of the text was overset so I needed to create empty pages to include it. There were also a number of blank pages which I attempted to delete but they kept re-appearing. Here is a screenshot of zoomed out pages showing some threads apparently going top to bottom. If not clear, what else would show you what is happening?

[Peter Spier]

First, the reappearing deleted pages are most likely caused by Smart Text Reflow and the use of primary frames. These are features I was never personally able to embrace because the seem to me to take away my control over what's happening.

From the screen capture I can't see where those top-to-bottom threads are really going, but it LOOKS LIKE they don't actually go anywhere -- they don't seem to start or end in an in or out port on a frame, which makes no sense (it's not possible), unless you have multiple frames (and corresponding multiple threads) on these pages and I just can't see them.

A couple of things to consider...

If you are not trying to rearrange the order of your text with the page arrangement, you might want to put your cursor in a story, select all to select the entire story, then copy and paste into a NEW document, but turn off Smart Text Reflow in the prefs for that new file before you paste. You'll probably only get a small portion of the text on a page initially, but you can pick up the overset by clicking the outport of the frame and Autoflow the balance into new frames by holding down the Shift key when you click the loaded cursor on the next page. this should give you a clean doc with a single straight text thread.

If those weird lines are phantoms, exporting to .idml and opening that might fix it.

If you can share the file, I still have a few minutes to take a look at it this morning before I switch into carpenter mode and head out to do some house renovations. If for some reason I can't get to it before this evening, one of our other regulars probably will look it over and make some suggestions for you.

[m5heath]

Here is the file (a novel called 'error of the moon'). Thanks for your suggestion to stay away from smart text reflow and pasting into a new documant - which I will try. Any suggestions re tois file gratefully received.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@m5heath 

Friend of mine had the same problem recently.

As @Peter Spier suggested - you can select whole text and copy it into the new document - BUT it looks like you have mixed portions of the text - so I think it would be better, if you go page-by-page, select text that flows correctly - from multiple pages - and copy it to the new document piece-by-piece - that way it will be easier for you to keep it in the right order.

I always turn off "smart reflow"...

Smart Reflow OFF:

Smart Reflow ON:

[m5heath]

Thanks for your help and I note you also eschew smart text reflow. I will try to test out your ideas.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

It wasn't so bad - just few empty TextFrames.

I think it's "fixed" - but please double-check.

[m5heath]

Wow! Mega-thanks! How did you fix it? Why were empty text frames causing a problem? The downloaded version seemed OK except that it contained some overset text at the end and when I tried to add a couple of pages they were added to the last spread, ie multiple pages, instead of adding a separate 2-page spread - how can I fix that?

[Robert at ID-Tasker · Accepted solution]

@m5heath

You are welcome. 

The problem was mostly with those empty TFs - one was on the side of the spread 18-19 - or close to that - and a few at the end - but linked to the start of the main Story.

Overset at the end - sorry, I forgot to reflow it after fixing shifted spreads around the mentioned 18-19 spread. 

You need to add new page / spread and reflow text. 

Remember to turn OFF smart reflow. 

[m5heath]

Done that. I can't thank you enough. Mostly things go OK with InDesign but I had a horrible feeling that I had destroyed the file!  And yes, smart reflow is OFF OFF OFF!

[Peter Spier]

Thanks @Robert at ID-Tasker .

Left for the day before the file was posted, and just got back now, so haven't had a look, but I'm guessing things are now straightened out.

[m5heath]

Yes they are thank you Peter - but your offer to help was much appreciated.