Rotate Entire Document 90 Degrees

[Jack]

My outsource printer requires that all spreads in my document be rotated 90 d. ccl. I can rotate individual spreads, but this is tedious. Wondering if there is a shortcut for rotating the entire document, either in the edit mode or while exporting to PDF. Have searched in both areas, so far without success.

With thanks in advance,

jwc

[vinny38]

I would do it in Acrobat.

[BobLevine · Accepted solution]

This is a giant red flag that tells me it’s time to find a new printer.

Rotating the pages in a PDF takes second using pages panel in Acrobat. If they can’t handle that, I wouldn’t trust them to do anything.

[Om Nath Jha]

Hi Jack,

I agree with Bob here. Rotating the pages in a PDF is a simple step and the printer should be able to do it easily. If they are not doing it, you should be checking a new one.

Regards,

Om

[Robert31481652dv8a]

Thanks for that information. So, InDesign is unable to rotate a document?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

What app is? Other than artboard-based ones like Photoshop and Illustrator? I can't think of a single page-layout, publishing or even word processing tool that can rotate the document contents globally.

What, you're going to type sideways? Such things are for output — which in the case of ID docs, means "in Acrobat."

[rob day]

You can rotate either the page view or the actual pages. To rotate the page view, which display’s the spine in a horizontal orientation (e.g., a calendar), select all of the pages in the Pages panel and from the flyout menu choose View Pages>Rotate Spread View

To actually rotate the pages, select the pages in the Pages panel, and with the Page tool active, set the rotation in the Transform panel. Note that the document has to be setup with facing pages uncheck for the spread to rotate and stay aligned:

Actually rotating the pages should not be a requirement for printing because the spreads can be rotated in the Print dialog by setting the Orientation either in InDesign or Acrobat

[Robert31481652dv8a]

Thanks again. To be clear to the people who will read this, when Window > Pages > corner menu > Page Attribues > Rotate Spread View rotates the page, it should or should not rotate the content in that page?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Nothing is rotated except the view, so the contents "rotate" with the orientation.

Rotating the view affects absolutely nothing else (if you print or export, the orientation will be normal) which is why I deprecated it as any part of a printing or functional solution. It's purely a designer's convenience, like turning a sheet of paper around to draw something more conveniently. It is not like using the Rotate function to actually rotate an object in the layout.

[Robert31481652dv8a]

You're right; sorry, I was typing from the wrong screenshot above. I meant:

If someone does Page tool > select pages > Transform panel > Rotation Angle, the objects on the page will also rotate if Page tool > Objects Move with Page is selected. But the objects will likely look shifted around, depending on the Liquid Page Rule etc. options. Right?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Rotating pages generally makes a mess. Your method rotates the page and leaves the contents in the same place on the artboard. There may be some combination of Layout Adjustment or Liquid Layout that would help, but in general, I have never found any actual "rotate the page on a physical basis" operation that was seamless. That works in the artboard apps, but not in the page layout apps — broadly speaking.

InDesign more or less requires that you lock down your page orientation as a first step and construct your layout from there; if you suddenly want your house to face west instead of north, it's not a matter of just turning the blueprint sideways. ID pretty much prefers vertical, north-up layout, with all rotation for output handled in the printer driver or PDF export.

Put another way, yes — there are tools and features that will kinda-sorta get you there. I can't see any of them as real alternatives to simply doing the layout correctly, from the page foundation up.

[Robert31481652dv8a]

That makes sense. I suspect that if someone is trying to fix some situation they created/inherited, trying to rotate the document will usually be a poor solution. Thanks.

[rob day]

If the document's spine is at the top and not to the left (a calendar) then the page view would need to be rotated (my first capture above). In the case above my content also needs to be rotated clockwise. @Jack  never mentioned the binding orientation, but if their document was something like a calendar, the printer's request to rotate the pages would be reasonable.