EPUB opening page

[EoinWinston]

Hello,

Is there a way to control what the starting/opening page is for an EPUB when opened for the first time on iPad??

It seems for me at least, that it opens on the first page of the first chapter from the Table of Contents. I have two title pages preceding the Table of Contents that I need the reader to have reviewed before accessing the chapters. (it's a fixed-width retina EPUB for use on iPad/iBooks and from the latest version of InDesign)

Thanks,

Eoin

[BobLevine]

Should just open to the very first page.

[EoinWinston]

Hi Bob,

Would have thought so but whenever I export an EPUB with a table of contents and a preceding title page,  it first opens on the first page of the first chapter and not the first page of the EPUB. I can't see anything in the export settings that would suggest I have something set wrong.

Thanks anyways,

Eoin

[BobLevine]

What are choosing in the export setting for navigation TOC?

[EoinWinston]

Hi Bob,

For the Navigation TOC I am choosing Multi Level (TOC Style) with the TOC Style set to the style I have assigned to the TOC in the EPUB.

Eoin

[BobLevine]

Just for giggles, try setting it to none. Let’s see if that has any effect on this.

I suggest saving as a new name and loading it to avoid any caching issues.

[paulhalupka]

Related but not exactly the same issue, for those that found this via search, as I did:

On a fixed layout epub, I was having a problem with the book opening in iBooks on Page 3, rather than the first page. I have been exporting the epub with the Multi-Level ToC setting on. What I realized is that iBooks seems to open automatically to the first page listed in the ToC/index. This assumes you're using the ToC created with paragraph styles and levels and all that from Layout > Table of Contents. 

What I did to adapt was create text boxes with heading styles on pages that I want to show up in the iBook index but not the ToC itself, then make the text color on those text headings no-color or invisible. Moving them off the page seems to work as well. For instance, I created a heading called 'Cover' that used a paragraph style that triggers its entry into my ToC. I then generate the ToC in Indesign, where that shows up as a page entry. I have to manually delete these from my ToC before exporting to ePub (easy enough) but then the book opens on the cover page rather than deeper in the book, which was my goal. The index shown within iBooks also shows the Cover as page 1, wheras before the cover did not show up in the index. This seems to have been related to the Numbering/Section options as well, which I had to disable. The Cover, intro page and ToC had been a separate Section with its own page numbering, but I had to eschew that. 

Bob's post on a related thread is relevant too, as I had also gotten hung up on iBooks remembering the last page on open. Important to make sure you're judging the scenario from a fresh export, first look, to eliminate these variables.