Ten Essential Techniques for Building Long Documents in InDesign

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…

A rather famous “long document” once began with those poetic words, and I think they neatly sum up the potential outcomes when you’re working with a lot of pages in InDesign. If you’re being efficient, taking full advantage of InDesign’s long document features (plus a few well-chosen third party add-ons), you can get a wonderful sense of accomplishment and productivity—and be the hero of the story. On the other hand, if you’re struggling, making tons of repetitive manual adjustments, and staring at hundreds or even thousands of unfinished pages with deadlines looming, a trip to the guillotine might seem like a merciful alternative.

So how do you arm yourself for the Battle of Long Docs? You don’t have to storm the Bastille, you just need to master some key tools and techniques. In this article, we’ll look at ten of the most widely-applicable, must-know techniques for working with long documents. With them, you can work efficiently, and set yourself up for success.

Also, let’s fully acknowledge up front that some of InDesign’s long document features are a bit “long” in the tooth, having seen little or no enhancement since they were first introduced. So I’ve also included information about third-party scripts and plug-ins to add or extend critical features and help you get the job done.

So without further ado, let’s begin.

1. Create a Master Page Strategy

Master pages are the foundation on which your document pages are built, so take some time and plan them out carefully. Begin by figuring out all the different page types you’ll have to create. Look for what they have in common. Put those common elements on a very basic master page that

you can base all your other master pages on. Then you can create variations for each page type, and update them quickly later on (Figure 1).

Figure 1: With a well-planned set of master pages, you can make a change once and have it apply throughout your document.

Tips for Working with Master Pages

• Give your master pages color labels and descriptive prefixes like CO for chapter opener, FM for front matter, and so on. That way, you can more easily tell which master has been applied to each document page in the Pages panel.
• Drag a document spread into the master pages area of the Pages panel to create a new master spread based on the document spread.
• To quickly apply a master page to document pages, target the document pages, and then Option/Alt-click on the master.
• To make master items appear above local items, put the master items on a higher layer. You can override master page items by Command+Shift/Ctrl+Shift-clicking those items on the document page. Override multiple master items at once by Command+Shift/Ctrl+Shift-dragging.
• Be sure you know the difference between overriding master items and detaching items. Overridden items can still respond to changes made on the master page. Detaching an item completely severs its relationship to the master page.
• You can protect an item from being overridden on a document page by selecting that item on the master page and unchecking Allow Master Item Overrides on Selection from the Pages panel menu.
• To jump to a master page, press Command+J/Ctrl+J and enter its prefix.

2. Create a Style Strategy

As with master pages, basing one (or many) styles on a “parent” style is a must-use technique for creating styles quickly and making changes to them even faster. Again, think strategically, and start with a very basic style to use as the foundation for your document. Then create variations with different space before/after, indents, color, etc. as needed. Then, whenever you change the parent style, the attributes that the child styles share with it will change as well (Figure 2). You can use Based On with any kind of style: paragraph, character, object, table, or cell.

Figure 2: The power of Based On styles: if the body text font is changed, the drop cap paragraph style will automatically change as well.

Tips for Using Based On Styles

• To choose a specific style as the base of a new style, highlight the one you want as the base in the panel, and Option/Alt-click on the New Style icon.
• To break the link to a parent paragraph style, change the style in the Based On menu to [No Paragraph Style].
• If you mess up while creating a Based On style, click Reset to Base to make the child style match the parent exactly.
• Keep the relationships between your styles relatively simple. If you go overboard and create a complex web of Based On styles, you could end up with some confusing results (and a lot more work to do) if you ever have to change a parent style.

3. Let GREP Styles Do the Work

With GREP styles, you can apply dynamic, pattern-based character styling to your text. You create GREP styles as part of a paragraph style, by writing a GREP expression (either by hand-coding or via the helpful pop-up menus) which matches a pattern of text that you want to apply a character style to. Once you apply the paragraph style, InDesign will constantly search for that pattern and apply the character style whenever it finds a match. Sound a little complicated? Well, it can be. But if you start out with simple expressions, you’ll soon get the hang of it, and then you may wonder how you ever got along without GREP styles. You’ll find some great GREP info and resources at creativepro.com/resources/grep/

4. Automate Formatting with Nested Styles

Nested styles allow you to apply dynamic character styling to a continuous range of text. You just tell InDesign which character styles to apply, and which character(s) mark the end of the range (Figure 3). They are perfect for creating things like run-in heads. Nested line styles are a variation that allows you to apply dynamic character styling on a line-by-line basis.

Figure 3: Use the pop-up menu to access special characters and wild cards for use in your nested styles.

Tips for Working with Nested Styles

• You can enter multiple characters to mark the end of a nested style. If InDesign finds any of them, it will end the nested style.
• For the most flexibility (but the least automation), use the End Nested Style Here as a delimiter. Put your cursor where you want the nested formatting to stop, and choose Type > Insert Special Character > Other > End Nested Style Here. Or even better, assign a keyboard shortcut for it.
• If you need to create a new character style for use within your nested style, scroll down to the bottom of the list, and choose New Character Style.
• If you need a repeating pattern of styling, you can do that too, by telling InDesign to repeat any sequence of nested styles.
• Unlike manually-applied formatting, the formatting from nested styles is not preserved in a table of contents. If you want that formatting in your TOC, you need to replicate the nested function in your TOC paragraph styles.

5. Reuse Text with Text Variables

Text variables are clones of text or data taken from elsewhere in InDesign. They can also automatically change ­according to the context in which they appear. They allow you to easily create things like running headers, chapter numbers, and more (Figure 4). The bad news is that a text variable, no matter how much text it contains, is treated like a single character. This means that you can’t select and apply formatting to just part of a text variable. And a text variable cannot break and wrap to another line. Text variables wider than the text frames they reside in will get compressed horizontally to fit.

Figure 4: A chapter title in a running header text variable. Create the variable to look for text in a specific paragraph or character style, then set it once on the master page, and it will automatically update on document pages to display the right information for each chapter.

Tips for Using Text Variables

• To define a new a text variable choose Text > Text Variables > Define. Click New, and set the options. You can also load text variables from another document, or drag them in from a library or snippet.
• Insert a text variable into a text frame by choosing Type > Text Variables > Insert Variable. Or right-click in a text frame, and choose Insert Variable.
• You don’t predefine formatting for text variables—they take on the formatting of surrounding text. Once in the text frame, you can change the formatting as you would regular text.
• To convert a single variable, select it, then right-click, and choose Convert Variable to Text. To convert all variables of a given type, select them in the Text Variables dialog box, and click Convert To Text.

6. Reuse Page Items with Snippets and Libraries

If you work with long documents, you probably have at least some recurring design elements that don’t always fall into predictable locations on the page. Or maybe you need to use a set of the same design elements across multiple publications. If so, you should be using libraries or snippets. Libraries are good for keeping a large number of items together and organized. Snippets are little text files that serve as instructions for building InDesign objects (Figure 5). Just drag and drop them into a document and they spring to life.

Figure 5: You can open a snippet with Dreamweaver or any text/code editor for a behind-the-scenes look at how InDesign “thinks” about page items.

Tips for Using Libraries and Snippets

• To place a library item at its original X,Y coordinates, choose Place Item(s) from the Library panel menu. Otherwise, just drag the item onto the page.
• You can drag an item from one library to another.
• Choose Update Library Item from the library’s panel menu to replace an item with a newer version.
• You can sort items according to name, date, or type. Or if you have a large library, you can filter what’s shown with the Show Subset dialog box.
• When a snippet contains swatches and styles that are named the same as swatches and styles in the new document, the document’s definitions are used.
• Snippets will retain their layer associations when you have Paste Remembers Layer selected in the Layers panel menu. If it is deselected, an imported snippet will be placed on the target layer.
• You can store ruler guides and grids in libraries and snippets.

7. Make Text Dynamic with Cross-References

InDesign’s cross-references give you the ability to create dynamic text from text anchors or paragraphs of styled text. You can create elements like “See Figure 11 on page 83.” Then if you move that figure to a different page, the reference can be easily updated with a quick trip to the Cross-References panel. To control the structure and formatting, you define and choose cross-reference formats (Figure 6).

Figure 6: In the New Cross-Reference dialog box, you can select the text you want to link to (the destination) as well as the format for the generated text (the source).

Tips for Using Cross-References

• Cross-references link different parts of a document via paragraph styles or text anchors. To create a text anchor, use the Cross-References panel menu and choose New Hyperlink Destination.
• Unlike text variables, the source text in a cross-reference (the dynamically generated text) can be selected, edited, and even wrap like normal text.
• Cross-references are hyperlinked in exported PDF files when you select Hyperlinks in the Export Adobe PDF ­dialog box.
• Cross-reference formats can be synchronized in Books.
• If you delete a cross-reference, the source is converted to normal text.
• The Preflight panel can alert you when cross-references are out of date or unresolved.

8. Build Tables of Contents

Table of Contents is the Swiss Army knife of InDesign’s long document features. It can be used to create any kind of a list of content within a document or a book (photo credits, lists of advertisers, figures, etc.). In fact, the content doesn’t even have to be visible in the document for you to collect it. You can put content (including inline graphics) in frames on hidden or nonprinting layers. You can include content in overset text frames. Or you can stick it out on the pasteboard. Just as long as part of the text frame touches the document page, and the content is styled with paragraph styles, you can collect it and reformat it with Table of Contents.

Tips for Working with Table of Contents

• One document can contain as many different TOCs as you wish. Just create a new Table of Contents style for each TOC you need.
• Remember that the frame containing a TOC is a special kind of frame. If you make edits to the TOC, and then update the TOC, your edits will be wiped out if you have selected the option Replace Existing Table of Contents.
• You can order items in a TOC either alphabetically or by where the content appears in your documents.
• InDesign searches a page from left to right for stories containing content for a TOC. So even if a story is at the bottom of a page, its content will appear ahead of everything else on that page if it’s the leftmost story.
• You can include content from text variables in a TOC. They’re converted to live text, which is both good and bad. It’s good because you don’t have to worry about problems with text variables not breaking. But the downside is when you update a text variable, the content in a TOC won’t update automatically. You have to choose Update Table of Contents to see the change.

9. Create an Index

The process of creating and updating an index can be the most complex part of a long document workflow. This is because an index isn’t a merely list of words in a book, it’s a list of ideas. And sometimes these ideas are abstract and not specifically represented by words you can harvest from a page like you can with a table of contents. For these reasons and more, a human brain (preferably one belonging to a professional indexer) is more suited to the task than a computer. But with some planning and effort, you can built a great index in InDesign. And for all the details on a powerful indexing tool that goes beyond InDesign’s native capabilities, check out Lucie Haskins’ review of KPS Indexing Plug-ins.

Tips for Using InDesign’s Indexing Tools

• The Index panel has two modes, Reference and Topic. In reference mode, you place markers in your document to indicate what you want indexed. In the Story Editor, the markers look like little 3D glasses—or, if you’re of a certain generation, a little Star Wars stormtrooper:
• In topic mode, you build or import a list of topics, into which you can later place index references. You can import a topics list from Word or another InDesign document.
• Be very careful not to delete your markers if you edit text later on. Use the Story Editor to see the markers and work around them.
• Once you have a reference, you may assign it a level (to group it with other references under a single topic), a sorting order, and a type, which determines the scope of the page reference (Figure 7).

Figure 7: Setting the level and type for an index entry in the New Page Reference dialog box

10. Sync and Output with the Book Panel

Sure, you could build an entire book in one InDesign document. Sometimes this may even be the best way to go. But often there are compelling reasons to split a long document over several (or many) InDesign files. For example, splitting up a document allows more than one person to work on it at the same time. How can you organize, synchronize, and output multiple files all as one? With the Book panel, of course.

Book Panel Tips

• If you select a document in the Book panel, then add a new document to the book, it will be added directly after the selected document.
• Select a range of documents to print, package, or export them ­instead of all the book documents.
• To force each document in a to book start with either a left or right page, regardless of what page the previous document ended on, choose Book Page Numbering Options > Continue on Next Odd/Even Page. Blank pages will be added to the ends of documents as needed.
• Be mindful of Automatic Document Conversion. With this selected, all book documents will be over­written with ones compatible with the version of InDesign you’re using.
• A book file isn’t really a substitute for a workflow system. Rather than put the Book file on your server and have everyone open documents from it there, consider using a “checked out” or “in use” folder. It’s old school, but it works.