I’ve been heads-down working on a very lengthy InDesign file the last couple of weeks. This prompted me to write up a 3 quick tips to help you move around quickly in a long document.
Go to Page
You can use the “Go To Page” shortcut, Command+J (Mac) or Ctrl+J (Windows). This will allow you to “Jump” to any page in your file. In the dialog box that appears, type the page number you want to go to. You can precede the page number with the name of an alternate layout followed by a colon, such as “LetterV:16”. Or, if you are using section numbering, you can precede the page number with the section prefix, such as C13. Put a plus sign in front of the number to indicate an absolute page number. For example, +15 would be the fifteenth page in the file, regardless of the page number.
Return to Where You Were
Once you’ve “jumped” to a page with the “Go To Page” shortcut, you may want to quickly return back to where you came from. Use the Layout > Go Back command to do this. The keyboard shortcut is Command+PageUp (Mac) or Ctrl+PageUp (Windows). Unfortunately, this keyboard shortcut doesn’t work if you have a text insertion point. If you use this command frequently, you might want to assign a different keyboard shortcut using Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts.
Use Page Labels
When editing a long document, I usually like to display small page icons in the Pages panel. But one drawback is that you can’t see page thumbnails with small icons, so you can’t tell one page from another. CS5 and later offer a quick way to “label” page icons with a color. This can function as a quick “bookmark”, or a way to mark different content, whatever you want to use the colored label for. To add a color label to a page in CS6, right-click or ctrl-click on the page, and follow the path in the screenshot below. In CS5, the command isn’t buried so deep. Just right-click or ctrl-click on the page and choose “Color Label”.
How to access the color label in CS6
These are only 3 tips. There are many more ways to make moving around a long document easier. If you have a favorite, share it in the comments!
This article was last modified on December 30, 2021
This article was first published on March 11, 2013
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