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• • August 19, 2010 at 8:37 am #56749
    Frederick Yocum

    Member

    I am starting to set up a series of brand standards guides. Some of the information will be common to all of the resulting guides and some is particular to the individual guides.

    The strategy I am considering:

    1. Set the information in individual InDesign documents as separate 'modules'. For instance, a “What is branding module”, a “Logo use module”, a “Thrift Shop layout” module.
    2. Set up book documents which contain the individual document modules that are required for that specific brand standard.

    So, some InDesign documents may be referenced in multiple book documents, while others only appear in one book document.

    So . . .

    Is this possible? It would save needing to replicate information over multiple documents.

    I am not too worried about maintaining styles over all the documents because I could have one master book document that contained all the InDesign documents. I am however wondering how this setup will effect page numbering. I don't think that numbering needs to be carried out at book level, eg each module could have separate page numbers, but there would need to be some consistency.

    Thanks in advance

  • August 19, 2010 at 9:51 am #56750
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    Very interesting idea. Should work, though no guarantees. I don't think there are any problems with having a document in more than one book…. but one thing to be careful of: open Book Numbering Options in the book panel menu and turn OFF automatic repagination (so it doesn't try to keep renumbering your pages). Do this before adding any documents! You might also want to turn off all the options in the sync options dialog box, so nothing accidentally gets synched.

  • August 19, 2010 at 10:36 am #56751
    Frederick Yocum

    Member

    Thanks for your wisdom David. I think I will proceed with the plan (taking account of your advice) and post how I get on, unless includes copious amounts of swearing.

  • August 24, 2010 at 6:08 pm #56816
    sherihy

    Member

    You may want to simply embed INDD files within an INDD file (instead of an INDB file), then the numbering will not be a problem? You can place an inDesign file just as you can place an Illustrator file or anything else.

    Sheri

  • August 27, 2010 at 2:14 pm #56851
    Andy Current

    Participant

    I routinely use the same files in numerous books. These are technical manuals that often share the same common content. I just update the TOC and PDF the book. Since all share the same styles life is easier yet. The only problem I run into is on the larger manuals. I hit Indesign's limit for the number of files that can be open at once. This occurs when making the PDF. My books are up to 120 files with many placed ID files all running to about 500 pages.

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