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 Are you working in an InDesign document that contains multiple page sizes? Perhaps you are creating letterhead and business card design samples and your client just wants to see print outs or PDFs of the business cards. What if you have created numerous design options and the business cards aren’t all on even or odd pages? This could make selecting those pages to print rather cumbersome.

The good news is that there is an option in the Print dialog box that is only activated if your document has multiple page sizes. This print option will select all the pages of the same size in the document and automatically generate a range of pages to print.

To Print all the Pages of the Same Size

1. Choose File > Print.
2. Choose to print Spreads or Pages in the General Options section.
   Note: This will get a little tricky if the spread contains different size pages, as the larger of the two will be selected.
3. Use the arrows above the Range field to navigate to one of the pages or spreads that is the size of the pages you need to print or type a page number in the range field.
4. Click the pages icon.  
5. The Range field will display all the pages or spreads of the same size. Note: This list of pages can then be edited.
6. Click Print.

Sound familiar? You draw an image frame, apply an object style, place an image, resize it, add a caption box, position the caption box a specific distance away from the image frame, flow in the caption text, and then resize the caption box to fit the text. If you were keeping track, that was eight steps. If your layouts have a lot of images, this process could be very time-consuming.

Here’s an easy way to simplify the process:

1. Draw an image frame. Make it the exact size you will use (or an average size). Either way, it can be easily resized when placed into your layout.

2. Create an object style (if it needs to be different than the Basic Graphics Frame style) with a text wrap defined for the distance from frame to caption text. In this example, the object style contains a text wrap defined for the top and bottom of the image frame, as it will have top and bottom caption box options. Apply the style to the image frame.

3. Draw caption boxes the exact width of the image and position them butting against or behind the image frame. Because there is a text wrap applied to the image frame, the caption box can be positioned either way and the caption text will be the correct distance away from the image.

4. Create object styles for both caption boxes. The styles should contain Text Frame Auto Size Options as shown below. The Caption Box Bottom style has the height-only auto-size option set with the top anchor proxy selected, and Caption Box Top style has the bottom anchor proxy selected.

Caption Box Bottom object style

Caption Box Top object style

5. Select the Caption paragraph style in both Caption Box object styles as well, so in the event text is typed directly into the box, the correct style will be applied. And if text is copied and pasted, the Paste without Formatting option can be selected.

6. Group the three boxes together (select all and choose Object>Group or Command+G) and add them to your CC Library. The new asset will be added to the Graphics section of the library.

7. Right-click on the asset in the library and choose Place Copy from the contextual menu. Position the loaded place gun and click to place the asset onto the page. The grouping can be resized, an image placed, and text flowed into a caption box that will automatically resize to fit the text. Note: Delete the unused caption box.

Although this may seem like a basic tip to some, perhaps it will spark some ideas for how to further automate your workflow process. When you have the ability to automate any task while creating your layouts, you should take full advantage of it.

Before I hand over any InDesign document to a client as “final” I have a list of items that I always check. I make sure the pasteboards are clean, that no empty text or image frames are floating around, and that my style lists don’t include any styles imported from other programs like Word. Of course, this final check also includes checking the Preflight Status and the Links Panel.

While checking the Links panel for a document I was working on last year, I noticed that there were a few images that had “PB,” “OV,” and “DT” next to them in the Page column. Easy fixes, right?

I had images on the pasteboard (PB), which I fixed by deleting them or moving them back onto the page. I also had anchored images in overset text (OV), which also showed up in the Preflight Status as errors. I took care of those by fixing the overset text.

At that point, the Preflight Status listed no errors that would prevent the file from printing or exporting correctly. But wait! The Links panel indicated that my document still wasn’t quite ready for me to hand off, as I had a good number of images with “DT” after them.

This was a long document with many images, and I had no idea how to find and fix the problem, because I didn’t even know what DT stood for.

I tried to select the links and select the Go to Link option from the panel menu, but that resulted in the following error message.

Then I remembered that our copyeditor used the Story Editor to edit the text and she had Track Changes turned on. This is how I could see the deleted text and the deleted links.

So, I opened the Story Editor (Edit > Edit in Story Editor or press Command/Ctrl+Y) and found the links in question were anchored in text that had been deleted. In order for the DTs in the Links panel to be resolved, I had to open the Track Changes panel, or right-click on the deleted image anchor in the text and accept the change for each image that was deleted in the Story Editor—or even better, I could Accept All Changes in the Track Changes panel.

I know these deleted images were not generating an error that would cause a problem in the output of this file, but it’s always nice to resolve any issues and hand off a nice, clean file.