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Whether to continue with separate files or consolidate in one ID file as a rebuilt book

Engaged ,
Jan 20, 2025 Jan 20, 2025

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Over many, many months, it has driven me somewhat mad to have a current book divided into 47 separate chapter files, along with 10 additional files for front and back matter. This division has hindered the curation of illustrations and design elements, as I would have benefited from viewing and considering the work as a whole. It would've allowed me to make or eliminate choices more effectively while working on the entire project. I understand the purpose of InDesign’s Book feature, but it hasn't been ideal for my needs, given a strong preference to see everything in context and make sweeping changes as necessary. This fragmentation truly slowed progress. Now, however, all design and editorial decisions are finally locked in, and I find myself contemplating whether to continue with these separate files or consolidate them into one InDesign file, rather than a PDF.

Why?

Initially, I started with just such a massive file containing all the chapters, but after over thousands of iterartions, it suddenly, eventually, suffered some corruption, necessitating the split into smaller components to recover and avoid further issues. It became apparent the 'Save As' function should’ve been used instead of merely saving. But unfortunately, it was too late then, and the new fragmentation came at the cost of maintaining an easy overview. Reassembling the book using the Book feature has not been enjoyable or appropirate it seems; it complicates pagination and introduces numerous other problems I’d rather avoid. Yet, here I am. I suspect I’d prefer the entire book to be a single file, assuming ID can handle it – about 400 pp. (200 spreads), with ~200 illustrations and anchored side notes instead of footnotes/endnotes.

I recognize forum members will rightly view this strictly from the perspective of seasoned ID professionals and question the approach. As an editor first and a designer with a more manual and intuitive style, I haven’t engaged with ID at the level that might've been ideal. I hope for some understanding, but for our current purposes, it’s about clarifying strategies for moving forward in ID for this book, where my primary role to date had been to conceptualize, edit, and manage.

For now, I have two main goals to address:

  1. How can I best consolidate everything into one file if not with the Book feature, and can ID actually handle 200 spreads in a single file?

2. The significant task of rebuilding. Although I initially attempted to establish line measures, styles, alignments, column gutters, grid, and, most importantly, key content, at the start, it took considerable time to actually finalize. It simply evolved, contingent on many factors and myriad interrelated issues arose, some of which couldn’t be resolved as I progressed through chapter after chapter, developing editor’s notes, illustration choices, and design elements. It is a complex work of architecural theory, now annotated and illustrated. While the document may appear visually pleasing today, it is, underneath, a tangled mess of minor inconsistencies and manual adjustments. It's why I’m contemplating the major task of rebuilding. If I do, it must be done right this time (now that the harder creative and editorial work is done). Perhaps I'm not the one to do it, but after so much, I feel it is possibly the final hurdle. If I am to do it, then new threads  may cover some specific details.

Apologies for the length. A long road, circuitous, with poor process, but I do not question the end effect now in the final product. The book's impact and explications are miles above the poor process.


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Community Expert ,
Jan 20, 2025 Jan 20, 2025

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At this point I would say this is really a personal choice. You already know the dangers (and potential slowdowns) of working with very large files, but what suits you and your style of work is the important factor here, as long as you take the required precaustions anuse best practices.

 

Combining into a single file is really not a big deal.  Make a copy of the first file and save with a new name, then open it and the other files (one at a time to avoid confusion), select all pages in the second file and from the Pages Panel flyout menu choose Move Pages and choose the copied first file as the destination. Do a Save As and now you have both a cobined version and the individual files for backup.

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Engaged ,
Jan 20, 2025 Jan 20, 2025

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Peter, thank you. For now, can I be assured that InDesign can manage a 400-page art book in a single file?

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Community Expert ,
Jan 20, 2025 Jan 20, 2025

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I think the question is more can your system resources handle it.

And which version of inDesign are you using? I'm a little nervous about the bugginess of the latest versions.

That said, it's easy to make the single file, not terribly time consuming, and can be done without risk to your existing files, so it's worth trying.

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Engaged ,
Jan 20, 2025 Jan 20, 2025

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CS6, on a 4-year old Windows system, primarily. 

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Community Expert ,
Jan 20, 2025 Jan 20, 2025

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Good for you. I do myt prodcution work in CS6 on Win10 as well, but my system is only three years old.

I think the software is capable of handling your task, presuming you have enough memory. Your description of the book in another thread makes it sound pretty graphically heavy, so memory intensive, and a lot of memory swapping is one of the places for potential corruption.

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Community Expert ,
Jan 20, 2025 Jan 20, 2025

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@Typothalamus

 

As @Peter Spier pointed out - you'll run out of resources much quicker than number of pages InDesign can handle.

 

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Engaged ,
Jan 21, 2025 Jan 21, 2025

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@Peter Spier, one of the things happening in combining to a single file is this – the Pages Panel shows the two files separately as "Custom V" and "Custom V2":

combined files appearing as two separate listscombined files appearing as two separate lists

 

I expected a single long list of pages, but perhaps this is how it's intended to be – that all chapters and sections (in this case, ultimately about 60) appear across a horizontal column in the Pages Panel. I don't know if that's actually desirable. Is this how it goes?

And why, actually, is it Custom V and Custom V2 – can they be renamed in the panel as Ch. 1 and Ch. 2?

And also, note the 2nd page blank beginning Custom V2 â€“ yes, it can be deleted either before adding or after, but in this book's design, every single ch. opens with a fresh 2-page spread (all the previous chapter's final content is arranged to end on the recto of its last page). I've had issues before if not keeping that initial blank in attempts to combine, changing the spread relationship (turning verso to recto and vice-versa). Perhaps a non-issue if doing the merging correctly. Every chapter in isolation is designed to start and end with the described relationship.

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Community Expert ,
Jan 21, 2025 Jan 21, 2025

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This is not expected.

This sounds like you might have used the create alternate layout command at some point. Also you should not be losing blank pages if you are selecting all the page in the panel before using the move command.

Does it work any differntly if you start at the bak of the book, making a copy of the last chapter, then moving the files in reverse orser to "before page 1" in the target?

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Engaged ,
Jan 21, 2025 Jan 21, 2025

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Ok, what I've tried now is adding all pages from chapters 2 and 3 to the first chapter excpet the initial blank which exists in chapters 2 & 3 (used to maintain that 2-page opening spread to chapters working on them in isolation). The separate "Custom V2" is no longer coming up. 


chapters 2-3 added to chapter 1, all showing now in one list as Custom Vchapters 2-3 added to chapter 1, all showing now in one list as Custom V




Not that it was necessarily bad to see each chapter listed in a separate horizontal column – which may make chapter navigation easy, but it was unexpected and may introduce other issues. I did not try reverse order assembly after seeing this 'work'.

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Community Expert ,
Jan 21, 2025 Jan 21, 2025

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Were you seeing the Custom V layout previously?

I can't remeber the last time I saw that here, nor why it disappeared. Might have been a bug patch. Last version was 8.1.0.402

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Engaged ,
Jan 21, 2025 Jan 21, 2025

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I can't be sure, honestly – it might've been noticed, but I was so consumed by other parts. Let me proceed to stitch the whole package together and see if it becomes an issue again. If it's a bug/patch, do I need to be concerned? I should likely try to stop adding to this thread to keep its initial (answered) question clear, but I certainly have other grid/formatting inconsistency questions to cope with in this final assembly. I'll try it here and if the group says move it to a new thread, I'll delete and repost. But it's coming now . . . 

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Community Expert ,
Jan 21, 2025 Jan 21, 2025

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No need for concern regarding the naming of the layout.

The only advantage to starting a new thread would be to get a new topic title which could attract more eyes.

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Engaged ,
Jan 21, 2025 Jan 21, 2025

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I'll describe one or two of the main inconsistenices I haven't worked out how to deal with, but should be resolved if assembling/redoing everything into a final large file.

The grid I developed using guides is mostly a classic Josef Müller Brockmann grid system style, in this case, with the page divided vertically into thirds via 3 columns separated by 2 column gutters. The main text body block spans the full width of 2 columns (across a gutter) and the 3rd column carries the sidenotes/annotations and smaller illustrations. Page numbers sit just outside the inner column gutter, instead of a more conventional page corner placement:

 

vertical column of grid shown with column guttersvertical column of grid shown with column gutters

 

Many months in, it was decided that the line measure (body text width) benefitted from a narrowing of ~2mm. The small change was a suprisingly relevant improvement to optimal readability/comfort. The measure is now fixed at 12.2 cm.  Additionally, the two column gutters would expand a small amount, just under 1mm, for a more comfortable distance between text body and side notes or side illustrations, also presevering the original page width between the margins after the -2mm line measure change.

~2mm narrowed line measure to text body~2mm narrowed line measure to text body



I’ve run calculations to divide the page many times, but am notoriously poor at them as something seems to go wrong where the columns to grid guides and margins don’t precisely match up. Snap-to-grid is on. I work in cm and mm, but we see the calculations go down to finer increments than hundreths of a mm, which is not preferable. Essentially, I need to rework this grid to align and divide with my 100% certain line measure (12.2cm), thus allowing all elements in the third column and including the page numbers' relationship to it, to sit properly aligned.

page number not aligned to new measurepage number not aligned to new measure

Or is there something artistically virtuous to breaking such strict adherence to the grid and I should let it be? Theoretically, possibly. But I can't see that happening in relation to page numbers.

So basically, if sticking to true grid adherence, I seek help to get the proper division of the page with gutters into thirds done/calculated, to then reset the guides accorrdingly on the master, to then realign elements to them, all based upon/using these known, fully fixed – after what was an enourmous review – specifcations of a 12.2 cm line measure and the two 0.458 cm column gutters. We know thousandths or hundredths of a cm are negligible, but gutter width turned out to be that exact number. Margins are 1.1 cm  top, 1.5 bottom, 1.2 inner, 1.1 outer.

I simply do not know exactly how to properly calculate and then set/reset the guides into even thirds based upon my fixed specs of 12.2 cmn line length and O.485 cm gutters.

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Community Expert ,
Jan 21, 2025 Jan 21, 2025

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I suspect this is not possible without changing the value of the inner or outer margin, but you haven't told us the page width...

In any case, 2 x column width + .458 = 12.2, so  column width is (12.2 - .458)/2 = 5.871 cm.

3x column width + 2 x gutter = (3*5.871) + (2*.458) = 17.613 + .916 = 18.529 cm.

You could also consider a slightly less rigid layout and adjust only the gutter width between the center and outer columns which should be visually impossible to see as you don't appear to be using two-column text anywhere. You would have to make this adjustment independently on your master pages for recto and verso.

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Engaged ,
Jan 21, 2025 Jan 21, 2025

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The page size is 21 x 26 cm. Your calculations are as I have them too. There are no two-column spreads except for a single one of bibliographic info, yet also a few spreads with illustrations occupying those two (now slightly uneven) columns. Over 90% of the spreads have the body text column situated on the right side of the page. On the ones that don't, the page numbers don't look right as they're more noticably off from aligning – I can't have it work properly if maintaining that flexibility of body text frame positions on the page. You have to be right – a change to the value of the inner or outer margin, with perfect symmetry of columns, may logically be the only way. And yet I don't wish to see the page get any narrower. So perhaps I'm stuck with imperfection.

predominant right orientation of side text columnspredominant right orientation of side text columnsoccasional left side text column, where page # looks more offoccasional left side text column, where page # looks more off







Can I tell ID precisely where to put other guides based upon numerical calculation beyond the initial and symmetrical guide setup, or am I stuck with the eyeballing along the ruler (as I've done here)? Perhaps this is where tool analysis tells us more.

At this point, I think the thing to do is to finally, completely assemble the one file and see how everything works and behaves in context as such. I must say that the inadvertently discovered scenario of having Custom V, Custome V2, etc., in the Pages Panel lending each chapter a horizontal start in the Panel, would've maybe been a nice way to faciliate and demarcate navigation of chapters rather than one long list of pages. At any rate, thank you. Stakeholders, distributor, and author/architect heirs, after now years of creative decision-making and archive research, are clamoring, as I move through what can be a key milestone or painful dent in life and career.

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Community Expert ,
Jan 21, 2025 Jan 21, 2025

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quote

[...] Can I tell ID precisely where to put other guides based upon numerical calculation[...]

 

By @Typothalamus

 

Yes, just select Guideline and enter value you want:

 

RobertatIDTasker_1-1737504314412.png

 

Guidelinies are like graphic elements - but with some limitations - for example, you can't rotate them.

 

You can also select multiple at once and move together or duplicate.

 

But area-selection will ony work if you won't select objects at the same time.

 

Or mirror:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/mirror-vertical-guides-in-indesign/m-p/15101265#...

 

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Community Expert ,
Jan 21, 2025 Jan 21, 2025

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You can set up as many master pages as you like, so it might be worth considering yet one more specifically for each of your "oddball" pages. Your readers will never notice going from one to the other.

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Community Expert ,
Jan 20, 2025 Jan 20, 2025

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@Typothalamus

 

If you need help in analysing your document - I can give you access to the full version of my ID-Tasker tool for free.

 

What kind of pagination problems do you experience? 

 

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Engaged ,
Jan 21, 2025 Jan 21, 2025

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With the Book feature, it was an overlap of page numbers, or not numbering, or not numbering quite correctly in some other way – a tricky issue when the page numbers in this book are also, too a degree, more designed in placement and styling, than a basic U-Haul book job. I wish to steer clear of ID taking too much control of this.

But now, with the answers from the forum here, I see that the Book Feature is often somehow over-emphasized and not suited here, to me, so assembling to pdf with it is now jettisoned in favor of a single large ID file.

With the myriad little inconsistencies to my files, tool analysis, as you've shown, should help. 

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Community Expert ,
Jan 20, 2025 Jan 20, 2025

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There are, in the end, only two reasons to use a Book structure —

  • If the chapters, or overall project, is extremely large and breaking it into pieces makes editing, file management, crash recovery etc. easier.
  • If the chapters need a lot of individual editing, composition, development etc., especially by more than one person. If chapters need an author, a technical reviewer or editor, and then the designer to work in concert, separate chapters greatly simplify this piecemeal work.

 

But other than that, novices (and even experienced users doing their first large book) often overestimate the problems of large chapters and go with a Book format when it's not really needed. And many newcomers assume that the Book structure is necessary, or useful or good in and of itself, when it brings little to most one-author/designer projects.

 

It is quite easy to manage even relatively large books as a single file, using features such as Parent pages, sections, and paragraph styles. Books often bring all kinds of complications and headaches that are greater than any advantage. It does take some experience to make the correct judgment.


┋┊ InDesign to Kindle (& EPUB): A Professional Guide, v3.1 ┊ (Amazon) ┊┋

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Community Expert ,
Jan 20, 2025 Jan 20, 2025

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@James Gifford—NitroPress

 

There is one more rreason:

  • When the same file can / should be used in multiple publications in the same form - and / or on its own 

 

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Community Expert ,
Jan 20, 2025 Jan 20, 2025

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That too; shuffling standard components into different end publications. Funny I always forget that one when I've used it any number of times for complex documentation projects.

 

I could caveat myself by suggesting it's not really a common practice for most authors/novices and is only used in more... industrial/commercial settings. But that would be cheating. 🙂


┋┊ InDesign to Kindle (& EPUB): A Professional Guide, v3.1 ┊ (Amazon) ┊┋

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