The Book Feature

First, let’s throw a pair of giant quotes around the word “book.” In InDesign, a Book is a database document that we use to assemble multiple documents into a single publication. So whether you’re making a magazine, an annual report, a proposal for an engineering project, or a book, you may wish or need to break down the project into discrete pieces. Sometimes each member of a team works on an individual document. Later, someone, maybe you, gets to collect those into one big one.

Some aspects of making a Book document are easy, especially if you know at the outset that this is how it’s going to be done. It can be more difficult to break up a single document into many, depending on how it’s built. A novel with few or no illustrations can easily be done in a single document of several hundred pages. But if you suspect that the publication is going to have many graphics populating a hundred pages or more, you can be sure InDesign will start to bog down unless you break it up into logical units like chapters.

To ensure consistency between documents in a Book, we can sync many settings across them: styles, swatches, numbered lists, and even master pages. Page numbering can continue smoothly from one document to the next, if we choose. And if we arrange to have one document per chapter, the chapter numbering can be somewhat automated as well.

When saving documents, a certain order of operations needs to be followed. But let’s discuss the making of Books before we discuss their quirks and bugs.

Creating and Populating a Book

Since a Book is a kind of document, we simply use InDesign’s File > New > Book… command. We’ll be prompted for a name and location to save it. The most disconcerting thing is what a Book document looks like; it’s yet another panel! But it’s much more. It’s a database that manages the documents we add to it. Once added, those documents should be opened strictly via the Book’s panel.

To add one or more documents to this little database, we can click the plus sign (+) at the bottom of the panel. We can then choose as many documents as we wish (which is easier if they’re already in the same folder).

Warning: By default, each document’s page numbers will change to go in sequence from the first document to the last when added to a Book file. To prevent this, first go to the Book panel menu and select Book Page Numbering Options…. There, you can temporarily disable Automatically Update Page & Section Numbers. I will do this until I have all the documents added and in the right order. I may also wish to look over the documents to see if, when pages are numbered, pages should be added to keep opening pages as odd numbered, for example, or if I’m willing to let some start on the left and some on the right. Some publishers insist that a chapter start on a right (odd-numbered) page. If you need to do this, check Continue on Next Odd Page and Insert Blank Page to bridge any gaps.

The Book panel menu has many important options, but please note that some change depending on whether documents are highlighted in the panel or not. If so, then many options are specific to the highlighted document(s). If all the documents (or none of them!) are highlighted, we see those items that pertain to the book as a whole. Also note the Save Book option in the panel menu. When you make changes in this panel, be sure to choose that option or use the Save button. Remember, a Book is a file! So when you’re done working on it, save it and then choose Close Book to reliably close it before quitting InDesign.

Remember “Sections & Numbering” (page 287)? If you want a specific document to begin a new section with a restart of numbering, you can access its Numbering and Section Options (and open the document) by double-clicking that document’s page numbers in the Book panel. In the same dialog, you can also specify which chapter that document should be. Displaying that chapter number requires a Text Variable that shows “Chapter Numbers” (page 325). Double-clicking the name of a document simply opens the document.

Document Syncing and Status

If the documents that compose the Book have been in the hands of other users, those users may have made changes to style or swatch definitions. But you can thwart that!

If you ensure that one document has the definitive styles and/or swatches (and other features), you may choose it as the source when synchronizing. Click to the left of the source document in the Book panel, make sure no documents are highlighted, and then click the sync button. Each document is opened invisibly and its styles are set to match your source document’s. You can control just what is synced by using the Book panel menu and choosing Synchronize Options…. Perhaps one doc has the right swatches and another has the right styles. Each can serve as the source for a round of syncing, with all the options unchecked except for the feature(s) you want synced. When the process completes, a message notifies you that documents “may have changed.” Well, I sure hope so.

When you open a document in a Book, a circle appears to its right in the Book panel. The circle disappears once you successfully save and close the document. When there is no icon it means all is OK. A warning that the file was modified outside the Book’s purview (yellow warning triangle) appears if you had edited the document when the Book file wasn’t open, or even if the panel was collapsed to an icon! I approach it like this: if I can’t see the file listed in the Book panel, the panel can’t see me edit the file. I know, weird. But it’s a way to deal with a bug that we’ve had for a long time.

If a file is moved, deleted, or renamed, it might have a “missing document” icon next to it. Finally, if the Book file is on a server where multiple people have access to both it and the files it manages, anyone can open the Book. However, if one user opens a document, it shows as locked and “in use” to the other users in their Book panel.