Page numbering and printer's spreads

You could show them the print booklet feature from Acrobat or Reader, and if they insist on printer's spreads, create a new InDesign file and place the original file into it in the correct order. Tip: add large red page numbers to your original document on a separate layer to confirm correct pagination on the printer spread version, then delete or turn off the layer before export. Also, be aware they are probably not going to adjust for creep.

Yes, but it will take some manual effort on your part. And it may not be necessary for you to do this.

• Get your Black Arrow/Selection tool.
• Cmd/Ctrl+Click on the page number (keyboard shortcut for Mac or Windows systems, respectively) to release it from the master page to the document page. This lets you edit the master page element on the document page.
• Double-click on the number to change from the Arrow/Selection tool to the Type tool. Highlight the number and re-type it to translate it from a page marker variable to text representing the page number.
• Lather, rinse repeat for each page number in the document. From there, page numbers will not change as you rearrange them into printer's spreads.

The other way to do this, much more quickly and efficiently, would be to use InDesign's File>Print Booklet menu command or Acrobat's Print Booklet capabilities. You can learn more about doing this with InDesign through this link, and how to do this with Acrobat with this one.

Hope this is helpful to you,

Randy

You need to know things like the number of pages they are printing in a section (and quite a bit more!).

If your printer can take a PDF, then you could re-arrange the pages once they are in Acrobat. (But really, this should be the printer's job, not yours.)

Alternately, if they need to have the InDesign files, you could try the script mentioned in this thread:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/convert-page-numbers-to-text/m-p/11513928