Trouble Deleting Pages and Orphaned Page in InDesign Document

[m5heath]

I am editing a 200 page book using ID 19.5 and I'm on Windows 11.

I really thought I had mastered deleting pages but now I find it's not working as I expect. I have 'Allow Shuffling' turned off for both document and selected spread. I then try to delete Page 7 but it leaves Page 6 as an orphan whereas I'm expecting the previous Page 8, now Page 7, to come up and join Page 6 as a double page spread, with the other pages changing to conform. I've tried checking 'Allow spreads' severally and together but that only makes things worse so I hastily pressed Ctrl-Z. I've tried deleting the page using the Delete Selected Pages icon and with the dropdown menu Delete Page option but I get the same result.

I suspect it may be because  my Page 6 is the last page of the 'front matter' (the old deleted Page 7 was blank which is why I wanted to delete it.) and not threaded like the rest of the book which starts immediately afterwards.

I have searched Google and these pages and found nothing that matches my situation. 

I attach a sreenshot showing the pages panel and the orphaned Page 6.

I would be most grateful for some advice

<Title renamed by MOD>

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

I hope this will help - square brackets around page numbers: 

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/anyone-know-how-to-reset-page-numbering/td-p/143.... 

[m5heath]

Well I now understand what the square brackets mean. I have selected all pages and tried 3 options: allow no shuffling, allow document shuffling and allow spread shuffling. The square brackets appear or disappear on cue. However, none of those options changes my orphan pages to a double spread so I don't imagine shuffling is the answer. In fact I can't see what shuffling does. Maybe it doesn't matter and it all corrects on export. My whole document is one section by the way. Pages 1-21 have no parent and pages 16 and 19 are the orphans. I hoped there was a setting that just set all spreads to double pages no matter what.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

Do you have any NOT Anchored graphics? 

If it's just a text - in one long Story - you could delete most of the pages and reflow it again. 

[m5heath]

There are no graphics. I could reflow but I would then have to reapply quite a lot of styles over 17 chapters. What I am also really trying to understand, for the future, is how the pages panel works. I'm clearly not understanding it at the moment despite all the tutorials I've watched. I'm attaching a chunk of my pages panel and you can see the two orphans. Why are they like that and how can I fix it? Is it a bug in ID?

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

What do you mean by "reapply styles"?

It's possible, that your file got corrupted - you could try IDMLing - export as IDML, open, save with a new name - do not overwrite your original file. 

[m5heath]

I'm assuming that deleting and reflowing would remove all my para styles so I would have to re-apply them - headings, dropcaps etc. Which I could do but would be time consuming.

I take it from what you say that the behaviour of the pages panel is not what you would expect. Did my screenshot shed any light?  I will try the idml process...

[m5heath]

Just tried saving as idml and re-opened. Everything is exactly the same with pages 16 and 19 orphaned. Sigh!

[Robert at ID-Tasker · Accepted solution]

Just tried saving as idml and re-opened. Everything is exactly the same with pages 16 and 19 orphaned. Sigh!

By @m5heath

Then, as long as same Story continues on those pages - TextFrames are linked together - you can delete those 16-19 pages. 

Then add those pages again - and reflow your text - create new TextFrames. 

Just in case - do it on a copy of your file. 

[Robert at ID-Tasker · Accepted solution]

Deleting pages won't affect styling / formatting of your text in any way. 

You just need to be sure - that it's a one long Story. 

If you have few separate Stories - then you have to delete pages "in between" - leave first TextFrame of each Story visible - and delete pages after - till the start of the next story. 

[m5heath]

Many thanks for clearing up that point ie that the styles would not be cleared by reflowing.

Now, nice surprise for me. In the idml document I turned on both document and spread shuffling. Then I selected page 16 and clicked the Create New Page icon - which added a blank page to the spread so page 16 was no longer an orphan. But I wanted to get rid of the blank page so I tried moving it to the end. And bingo, all the pages shuffled correctly except that the blank page was not at the end - it had disappeared. And to boot, page 19 was no longer an orphan either! So as far as I can see, everything is where I want it. Not sure I've totally grasped the pages panel but I've definitely taken a few steps forward. Many thanks for your time and trouble - I am so grateful. 

[Barb Binder]

Hi @m5heath:

Remember, always work on a copy of the original when you are unsure about the process...

So on a copy, click the first page thumbnail in the Page panel  (it turns blue) and Shift+click the last page thumbnail (and now all thumbnails are blue) and make sure both of these are checked in the Pages panel menu:

And when you get this message, say no:

This will restore the document to the normal facing pages flow.

~Barb

[m5heath]

Thanks Barb - I've made a careful note of your advice!