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i want to number the puzzles automatically

Explorer ,
Aug 15, 2020 Aug 15, 2020

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i am creating a book with puzzles and their solutions at the end

1 puzlle per page

        I am writing Puzzle# on the top of the page then puzzle and at the bottom i am writing 'solution on page ___,

4 puzzles per page
           all 4 puzzles have their 'Puzzle # ------' mentioned as well.
An  AI file contain the puzzles and solutions. I have placed this AI file in InDesign.  

How can i add these

puzzle no,

solution on page # and

puzzle # for soltion automatically.

i am new and right now i have added these nos manually but messed up everything when deleted some puzzles. Now solution of puzzle 1 is actually on 158 but according to the pic it is on 174. I want to avoid this situation. 

puzzle.PNG

 

solution.PNG

 

Is there anyway i can do it without using MailMerge option. I want to avoid it bcoz then i have multiple copies of same data. I was given a pdf with 1puzzle per page and 9 solutions per page  with differant formatting than in above pic. I have set these to my desire in AI. I find it easier to format in AI than in acrobat. and I have to create some 50 puzzle books. so I want to avoid the mail merge option.

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How to , Scripting

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correct answers 1 Correct answer

Community Expert , Aug 22, 2020 Aug 22, 2020

This is standard InDesign cross-referencing. Here's an outline, you can check the details in any of InDesign guide or its help pages.

1. Open the Cross-references (CR) panel (Window > Type & Tables > Cross-references)

2. On p. 158, select 'Puzzle 1' and create a text anchor (a.k.a. hyperlink destination): in the CR panel's flyout, select New Hyperlink Destination. Accept the provided name (e.g. 'Puzzle 1'). Do this for all puzzles.

3. On p. 4, at the paragraph 'Solution on p. 174', delete the pa

...

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Community Expert ,
Aug 16, 2020 Aug 16, 2020

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I find it easier to format in AI than in Acrobat.

I can imagine that. But why torture yourself with AI?

You should do everything in InDesign. Those puzzles and their solutions are very easy to do in InDesign, and when you have everything in InDesign you can use InDesign's cross-references to create the puzzle references, which will be updated automatically whenever you add or remove pages.

Peter

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Explorer ,
Aug 18, 2020 Aug 18, 2020

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Well my reason for choosing AI for formatting is when i import pdf into indesign it behaves as image. I can not select lines, digits are not text objects anymore. I searched youtube but couldnot find any solution to this. Typing these puzzles would take time and also chances for error are high.

 

If i am not wrong for cross referance i need to referance it on every  puzzle pageand its corresponding solution page. I can't simply use master page for this like i did for Page no.

 

Can you tell me How to add PUZZLE # automatically on puzzle page as wells as on solution page? 

Is there some kind of a counter(like page no) that i can add.

 

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Community Expert ,
Aug 18, 2020 Aug 18, 2020

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My suggestion was to do all the puzzles in InDesign. Simply do a 9x9 table and fill the cells with numbers.

 

But that's a different issue than getting the cross-references, which you can do even with placed PDFs (or AI). It could work like this:

1. On p. 158 you need four paragraphs, one each for 'Puzzle 1' through 'Puzzle 4'. The numbers are in marked up with a text anchor.

2. On page 4, at the bottom right, 'Solutions on Page ' is static text, already present. At the end of that paragraph you place a cross-reference to the page number that Puzzle 1 is on.

This is not difficult to automate with a script.

 

P.

 

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Explorer ,
Aug 21, 2020 Aug 21, 2020

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Thank Peter for the answer I just wanted to avoid adding cross referances. But so far thats the solution for me 

If i knew scripting i would have made some sort of counter to do the task.

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Explorer ,
Aug 22, 2020 Aug 22, 2020

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1. On p. 158 you need four paragraphs, one each for 'Puzzle 1' through 'Puzzle 4'. The numbers are in marked up with a text anchor.

Can you eloborate this. 

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Community Expert ,
Aug 22, 2020 Aug 22, 2020

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This is standard InDesign cross-referencing. Here's an outline, you can check the details in any of InDesign guide or its help pages.

1. Open the Cross-references (CR) panel (Window > Type & Tables > Cross-references)

2. On p. 158, select 'Puzzle 1' and create a text anchor (a.k.a. hyperlink destination): in the CR panel's flyout, select New Hyperlink Destination. Accept the provided name (e.g. 'Puzzle 1'). Do this for all puzzles.

3. On p. 4, at the paragraph 'Solution on p. 174', delete the page number '174'. Click at the end of the paragraph to place the cursor there, then from the CR panel's fly-out select 'Insert cross-reference). Or click the + at the bottom of the panel. This opens a new window. At 'Link to:', select 'Text anchor'. Then select the text anchor, then in the Format dropdown, select 'Page number'.

 

Do this for every puzzle. This will be painful if you have more than 10 or so cross-references, but if 'Puzzle 1' on p. 4 is in a unique paragraph style and 'Puzzle 1' on p. 158 is in a unique, but different, paragraph style, then it's simple script to create those cross-references.

P.

 

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