Books: Creating: Free InDesign Tutorial

Topics covered in this InDesign tutorial:

Using multiple files to create a book, Synchronizing files

Exercise Preview

Exercise Overview

InDesign allows you to link a number of documents together to create a “book.” In this exercise, you will take four documents and put them into one book. The great thing about this is that you can link styles and update the table of contents across all the documents!

Preparation

You have already created the first file, yourname-wine1. Now we will open some existing locked files and save them as yourname-wine2, 3, and 4.

1. Open the file Wine2.indd.

2. Do a File > Save As, and save it as yourname-wine2.

3. Open the file Wine3.indd.

4. Do a File > Save As, and save it as yourname-wine3.

5. Open the file Wine4.indd.

6. Save it as yourname-wine4.

7. Close all the yourname-wine… files if you haven’t already.

Creating the Book

1. Create a new book by going to File > New > Book.

2. Name it yourname-wine book.indb and save it into the InDesign Class folder.

3. In the Book panel that appears, click the Add documents button .

   The first chapter will be the master chapter. This means any subsequent chapters will be formatted so that any Paragraph and Character Styles, Swatches, etc. can be made consistent with those of the master chapter. Choose yourname-wine1.

4. Click the Add documents button again to add a second chapter. Choose yourname-wine2. Repeat this with yourname-wine3 and yourname-wine4.

   NOTE: To add multiple files all at once, you can click on the first file, then Shift–click the last file to select them, then click Open.

Synchronizing the Book

Now that all the chapters have been added to the book, let’s make sure all the style sheets, etc. are consistent throughout the files.

1. In the Book panel, make sure none of the “chapters” are selected. This is important because we want all documents to be synchronized. If any are selected, only the selected documents would be synchronized.

2. Click the Synchronize button . (If you get a message saying some files may have changed, just click OK.)

Updating the Table of Contents for the Entire Book

Now that we have a book, let’s update the TOC in yourname-wine1 to include listings from the other documents in the book.

1. In the Book panel, double–click yourname-wine1 to open it.

2. Go to Layout > Table of Contents.

3. Don’t change anything except these options at the bottom left of the window:
   • Make sure Replace Existing Table of Contents is checked.
   • Check on Include Book Documents.
   • Click OK.

   The TOC should now be longer, so you’ll need to add some pages. Let’s do that now.

4. Open the Pages panel.

5. Click on the Table of Contents master page’s left page and drag as shown below:

   

6. Go to page i of the document.

7. Notice the red text overflow symbol at the bottom-right corner of the TOC’s text frame. Click it with the Selection tool to load up the overset text.

8. Go to page ii.

9. Click on the main 2-column text frame and you should see text flow into it.

10. Unfortunately, there is more text so you’ll need to create a few more pages. To drag out two new pages at once, go to the Pages panel and drag as shown below:
    • From the T-Table of Contents master PAGE NAME (not the page icons).
    • To the PAGE NUMBER area of the spread ii–1 (in the number area BELOW the icons).
    • Make sure the cursor looks like (the one in the screenshot below).

    

11. Notice that this created two more pages (iii–iv) before page 1.

12. Go to page ii of the document.

13. Click the red text overflow symbol at the bottom-right corner.

14. Click in the 2-column main text frame on page iii to flow the text into it.

15. Do the same for the overflow on page iii.

16. Save the file and close it.

17. In the Book panel, click the Save the book button . Alternately, you can click the panel menu , then choose Save Book.

18. Close the Book panel.