First — Congratulations on your forum! What a privilege to have you two offering your expertise to everyone. Many thanks, and all the best for 2010!
Second — I thought I had a problem with my Master Pages. It turned out to be a really stupid mistake, but one that had been easy for me to make when I was brand new to InDesign. So I thought your readers might find it interesting, and perhaps it will save someone some frustration and puzzlement.
I opened an INDD doc that I had started several years ago in InDesign CS. There was a Master Page for the body of the book, which looked so simple that it had to work. But when I placed 100 pages of text using auto-flow, the text flowed only onto verso pages!
The Master Page A was assigned to all pages after the front matter, and contained just a textbox on either side of the spread. But the one on the right-hand page wasn't getting any text. I wondered if there was some issue with old InDesign docs not working correctly in CS4. So I started poking around on the web for other reports of Master Page problems.
Then, after I remembered to keep it simple, I wondered if the two textboxes on the Master Page were threaded together. They weren't. So I joined them and my problems were over.
The first lesson here is that it's usually best to start with simple explanations, rather than to start doing research. A simple fix takes no time at all, especially compared to surfing half a dozen forums, so just try it.
The second lesson is that now that InDesign doesn't really require textboxes for body copy on the Master Pages for a book layout, by skipping them I would have avoided the whole problem. Although they work fine, they seem to be largely unnecessary. Just place at the column rule (at an appropriate page depth) and let auto-flow do the work.
I hope some of your readers find this helpful.
Cheers,
Allen
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