Page Size & Layout Adjustment

The last figure illustrates that pages in an InDesign document may be of different sizes. Creating gatefolds is just one excuse for doing so. Another is the Alternate Layout feature, in which two or more layouts exist in the same document for the same content—a print layout and a mobile device layout for an ebook version, for example.

Page size and accompanying margin dimensions, etc., are first set when a document is created. Subsequently, the size of selected pages can be altered with the Page tool. The page size used by an entire document can be set via File > Document Setup… or by creating an alternate layout (Layout > Create Alternate Layout…).

There have been, and remain to be, various methods for adjusting the position and size of content in documents whose page size had to change. In the Margins and Columns dialog box is the Enable Layout Adjustment checkbox. This feature uses page margins, columns, and guides to adjust the size and position of objects snapped to them (or very nearly so) when we change page size, page orientation, or margin or column dimensions. For very simple layouts, this has done marginally well (pardon the pun). This method cannot be combined with Liquid Layout. Very strangely, you can adjust the settings for this feature via Liquid Layout panel menu > Layout Adjustment, where you’ll be reminded that these methods are mutually exclusive.

Liquid Layout has many more options—so many, in fact, that in longer or slightly complex documents, it is simply faster to manually adjust content. It does offer a guide-based system (using guides made while the Page tool is active), or you can set rules on each object to indicate how it should be resized or repositioned when the page is resized.

In my experience the the newest method, Adjust Layout (discussed below), offers the best results with a reasonable number of controls, whether you’re adjusting just the margins of a page, an entire page’s geometry, or the geometry of all the pages of a document.

Adjust Layout

InDesign CC 2019 includes a new method—File > Adjust Layout—in which you can set parameters for the automatic adjustment of existing page content to accommodate the new dimensions. You can also access this feature from the Properties panel and via Layout > Margins and Columns….

The way you access this feature, and what you choose within it, depends on your reasons for the adjustment. If it’s a matter of making a small adjustment to margins at the request of your printer, you’ll likely use Layout > Margins and Columns…. For a poster, postcard, or one sheet, you may need to change more. For example, if you originally designed a poster to be printed on Super B-sized paper (330 mm x 483 mm, about 13" x 19"), but find you need it on Tabloid (11" x 17"), this one dialog box can resize everything, even the type, in one go. Or a small postcard’s content can be upsized to a much larger size coherently. In the example in the following figure, roughly square pages have been resized to Letter page size.

When resizing type, you can choose a minimum and maximum size. When a page is resized, items in the margin or pasteboard will remain in those areas, and graphics of various kinds will keep their proportions and their frame dimensions (crop) will be guided by content-awareness (an attempt to keep their subject in view).