Book Pagination (.indb) Continuous Pagination (HELP!)

[D***@adobeforums.com]

THE DOCUMENT:
I've been working on a book with 14 separate documents using the Book feature (.indb) which coordinates the separate chapters (documents) into a single book for the last three years. Suddenly my project has become a nightmare as it's jumbling my pages, layout and causing endless frustration and work going back to previous drafts and rebuilding work over again.

Here's the setup: The book is legal-sized (8.5"x14") oriented in landscape format with facing pages (or double-sided) and it's always been set to paginate continuously from document to document or chapter to chapter so that there's a regular page numbering system.

The book begins with a single paged document that represents the cover of the book. Each succeeding document begins with a left page and ends with a right page. There are no gaps document, with always facing pages throughout.

THE PROBLEM:
One day, after adding two pages the document repaginated and two things happened:

1) The continuous pagination was lost so that each document began its numbering system with page 1 (the left page). I checked Book Page Numbering Options and saw that they were set to "Continue from Previous Document". I tried setting it to "Start page numbering at 1" repaginated and then back to "Continuous from Previous Document" figuring I just had to toggle the setting to get it to reinvoke, but this did nothing.

2) Jumbling: I could live with the above scenario, but here's the real show-stopper: In places, the facing page structure was jumbled so that, for example, page 7 (which would've been the left page under this new undesired repagination) appeared as a right page with NO CORRESPONDING FACING PAGE (just blank). This completely threw all graphics after that page into disarray.

In some documents, this reording with no facing page occurred at the beginning of the chapter (or document), but in most it did not. Many have the missing page in the middle, some with a few missing facing page, some with only one. In some documents there were no issues of pages jumbled without facing pages, but in most there were.

HELP!
I've been working in computer page layout for 19 years, InDesign since it was a beta known as K2 and this is the most pernicious problem I've faces yet. I'm at my wits end on this issue and don't have a clue what to do except to go back to a previous draft and never add pages to a chapter, which is not workable in the long run.

I did try creating a new Book document (.indb) and then using the separate documents to build the book, but this did nothing for me.

Please help me Adobe, I've been using your products since 1985 and really need assistance.

Thanks!

David

[F***@adobeforums.com]

1) The settings in each indivudual document will override the settings in the book document, so make sure Layout>Numbering & Section Options... is set to Automatic page numbering.

2) In the book page numbering options, make sure you have continue from previous document checked and on the bottom uncheck insert blank page.

I'm not quite understanding how you have this set up. When you go to file>Document setup... Does it have facing pages checked? And what values do you have as in the width and length boxes?

[D***@adobeforums.com]

I appreciate your reply. However, these are not the issues that are causing the problems. Keep in mind that everyting has been working just fine and according to plan since starting the project in 2003. Yes, those are all the topics and settings I have set correctly. The problem is not having the correct settings. Yes, I do have the facing pages setting on as the pages are acting accordingly and are facing one another. Yes Automatic Page numbering is set to Automatic.

The problem is that 1) pagination is not following the "Autmatic Page Numbering" setting any longer (as it has for three years) and 2) Repagination is moving pages about when I invoke repaginate so that a few pages have no facing page and everything that follows the the .indb file is not working correctly.

I've paid for Adobe Expert Technical support in the past only to find that the people answering the phones only know basics and fundamentals and were not at all experts (it was actually a bit embarrassing).

I've poked around the website a bit and there does not seem to be any other options for getting help other than this forum. Perhaps I'm wrong here and someone can tell me where to pose questions to the development team directly (which Im sure DOES have InDesign experts who can problem solve a thorny problem such as this). Do people form Adobe work these forums as well?

My three year project--it is a lenghty technical manual-- comes to a grinding halt unless I can add pages and repaginate.

In the end, I suspect the answer lies in rebuilding the .indb book document in a more sophisticated way than I have tried thus far OR, there's a bug that was introduced by the last update to the program. Perhaps I should try going back to CS1?

Any insights or thoughts would be gratefully appreciated.

David

[S***@adobeforums.com]

Have you done the obvious? Namely, have you thrown away your InDesign preferences?

[F***@adobeforums.com]

Another idea would be to turn off atomatic repagination, and when you add pages repaginate by clicking "Repaginate' in the flyout menu of the book pallet. Maybe that would help.

[D***@adobeforums.com]

I've tried both, trashing the preferences and turning off automatic repagination. Neither has any effect. I went to my appendix and tried adding 2 pages in the middle, before the first pages, after the last pages and each time it would add a page without a corresponding opposite page. Sometimes in sets of two successive pages without corresponding opposite pages, one a right, the other a left. But the results were inconsistant, sometimes the jumbling would happen in the middle of the document and two fine pages were added.

Then, today, I decided to rebuild the Book (.indb) again and go this message, which I've never seen before:

"The document 01. INTRO.indd needs to be updated but has missing fonts. It may recompose with a default substitute font and result in inaccurate page numbers hereafter. Do you want to continue repagination?

Yes, there were some missing fonts that I couldn't locate, so I substiuted other fonts and voila, the pagination returned to a continuous form and the jumbled pages stopped occuring. I've added pages to each chapter and all is now fine.

Yeah. All is well again.

[F***@adobeforums.com]

I'm glad you got it all worked out. It looks like there must have been some corruption in the book file. Sorry I couldn't help more.

[C***@adobeforums.com]

Is there place to show how many total pages in a "book" file? My book normally start with Front Matter, so number would start at...i, ii, iii....

When working on a single document, the total number of pages show at bottom corner of the page palette, so I have no trouble of knowing how many total pages in the file even with Front Matter in the beginning. However, when working on a "book" file, where does it show the total pages of all documents added up? Or I need to calculate myself? Please advice. Thanks.

[F***@adobeforums.com]

I admit this isn't an exciting workaround, but you can export book to PDF (in the flyout menu of the book pallet with no documents selected) and in Acrobat it will give you the toal page count.

[T***@adobeforums.com]

in prefs change it to "absolute numbering" and look at the book file, which will have changed to number the book 1-xxxx.

[F***@adobeforums.com]

Tom,

That makes each document start from page 1 (at least that's what happened when I tried it).

[T***@adobeforums.com]

Ah, does it not show on the book palette window each doc, stating "XXXX doc - 1-20" then the next "XXXX doc - 21-35" etc?

[F***@adobeforums.com]

It seems absolute numbering only works within one document. So if you have one document with five sections, absolute numbering will ignore the section numbering. But in a book, since they are seperate documents, each one shows in the book pallet as statring at 1 (although it doesn't alter the actual page number that is displayed in the document, that still goes according to sections and order of the book).

This is the way it works here in the ME version. I wouldn't rule out an ME bug, though.