Reply To: splitting/merging large InDesign document

I'm assuming the layouts are the same size.(?) If so, an option would be creating a third document with the same page size (and bleed) which would basically act as a container for your 2 versions. You can directly place your existing InDesign layouts onto the new document and effectively linking the two versions together. You can place/link page 5 from version 1 and page 6 from version 2, for example.

Your version 2 doesn't need to be version 1 + the additional pages. You can keep version 1 as is and just create the pages that will be different. You can even do separate files per section/chapter (which I think would be easier in the long run as it would be more organized). And of course, as the files are linked, any future modifications to the versions 1 & 2 will also reflect on version 3.

You may need to modify your pagination, though. I would suggest creating a separate layer for the page numbers (on versions 1 & 2) so you can just turn them off when placing onto 'version 3'.

Hope this helps solve your problem.

Vin