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Doc Maik
Brainiac
July 21, 2022
Answered

Pasteboard settings vs. pasteboard look

  • July 21, 2022
  • 2 replies
  • 625 views

Hello, all who may react and answer to this thread!

My pasteboard settings are:

As far as I know, these are global. They might be local, but I have 4 very similar documents open of which three look the same regarding the pasteboard, but one doesn't. However, the pasteboard settings of that one are the same as with the others. So how does this come?

Pages 1 and 2 have a top/bottom margin of more than 10 mm, while pages 3 and 4 have 10 mm, but are wider. According to my settings, pages 3 and 4 look correct. I checked other settings like "Document setup" or "Margins & Layout", but there is nothing related to the pasteboard. Only in the prefs.

I also thought about Indesign perhaps enlarging the pasteboard automatically when you place objects there, but I never saw that actually happen.   

Does someone know a way to align the pasteboards?

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Laubender

Hi @Doc Maik ,

what exactly do you mean with "to align the pasteboards"?

Do you mean that the size of every pastebaord for every spread should be the same?

Or that all pasteboards should be aligned left or right regradless of their width?

 

Try the following to make all pasteboards the same size:
[1] Remove every object on the pasteboard. Especially inspect the edges of the pasteboard.

Do a Select All to see if objects are nearly off the pasteboard and determine the size of the pasteboard by their presence.

[2] Un-transform every page. Means, if a page was selected by the Page tool and was transformed, like scaled, skewed or rotated, rotate, skew and scale it back to "normal". Means the document size you can see in the Document Setup dialog.

 

[3] If suggestion [1 to 2] do not do the job, export to the document to IDML and open the IDML file as document.

 

Note:

The values for horizontal and vertical margins of the pasteboard are minimum values.

This is not revealed in the GUI, but in the Document Object Model for scripting in a comment about property pasteboardMargins: https://www.indesignjs.de/extendscriptAPI/indesign-latest/#PasteboardPreference.html

 

The minimum values can be expanded for a particular spread's pasteboard if you add additional pages to a spread. A maximum of 10 pages per spread is possible. Also the values can be expanded if  you change the size of a page with the Page tool. Or perhaps if you move/duplicate whole spreads from one document to another. Also if you do alternate layouts with different page sizes or page scaling. Oh. And you could move around pages with the Page tool. That would also change the area and "position" of the pasteboard of a particular spread.

 

To answer your question:
You cannot align different pasteboards directly, because you cannot select the pasteboards and use the Align panel to align your selection. What you can try is to select all pages with the Page tool and use the Align panel to align the selected pages. To select all pages, switch to the Page tool and do the keyboard shortcut for Select All.

 

But this Align panel trick will not work in your case, I think.

Your screenshot is already showing all pages aligned.

 

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Professional )

2 replies

L
Laubender
Community Expert
July 21, 2022

@Doc Maik said: "…Also, this is about the pasteboard, not the page. I don't see the relation."

 

You'd be surprised.

Page is selected with the Page tool:

 

Selected page is rotated to 180° with the Transform panel:

 

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Professional )

D
Doc MaikAuthor
Brainiac
July 21, 2022

Yes, that's the auto-stretch of the PB. But if you don't transform or you do rotate 90° and then back, the PB should adapt.

Maybe I' should test out the IDML method, unless the IDML even saves the PB size.

L
LaubenderCorrect answer
Community Expert
July 21, 2022

Hi @Doc Maik ,

what exactly do you mean with "to align the pasteboards"?

Do you mean that the size of every pastebaord for every spread should be the same?

Or that all pasteboards should be aligned left or right regradless of their width?

 

Try the following to make all pasteboards the same size:
[1] Remove every object on the pasteboard. Especially inspect the edges of the pasteboard.

Do a Select All to see if objects are nearly off the pasteboard and determine the size of the pasteboard by their presence.

[2] Un-transform every page. Means, if a page was selected by the Page tool and was transformed, like scaled, skewed or rotated, rotate, skew and scale it back to "normal". Means the document size you can see in the Document Setup dialog.

 

[3] If suggestion [1 to 2] do not do the job, export to the document to IDML and open the IDML file as document.

 

Note:

The values for horizontal and vertical margins of the pasteboard are minimum values.

This is not revealed in the GUI, but in the Document Object Model for scripting in a comment about property pasteboardMargins: https://www.indesignjs.de/extendscriptAPI/indesign-latest/#PasteboardPreference.html

 

The minimum values can be expanded for a particular spread's pasteboard if you add additional pages to a spread. A maximum of 10 pages per spread is possible. Also the values can be expanded if  you change the size of a page with the Page tool. Or perhaps if you move/duplicate whole spreads from one document to another. Also if you do alternate layouts with different page sizes or page scaling. Oh. And you could move around pages with the Page tool. That would also change the area and "position" of the pasteboard of a particular spread.

 

To answer your question:
You cannot align different pasteboards directly, because you cannot select the pasteboards and use the Align panel to align your selection. What you can try is to select all pages with the Page tool and use the Align panel to align the selected pages. To select all pages, switch to the Page tool and do the keyboard shortcut for Select All.

 

But this Align panel trick will not work in your case, I think.

Your screenshot is already showing all pages aligned.

 

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Professional )

D
Doc MaikAuthor
Brainiac
July 21, 2022

to align = angleichen

[1] Didn't change anything yet.

[2] Don't know how untransform a page. But it was never transformed. Also, this is about the pasteboard, not the page. I don't see the relation.

[3] Sounds logical to me. Thanks.

By the way, I now saw it for the first time  that Indesign would extend the width when placing a guide on the PB. Removing that line would resize the PB again. I checked something else I didn't mention before: the master page. It has the size of 1 & 2. 

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