MT wrote:
I have a document set up and need to create a 2nd doc with the same information. Is there anyway to link the two docs so that if I make any changes in the first document they will get picked up in the second?
It all depends on what kind of “changes” you want to make. For example, if you want to synchronize text across multiple documents, check out this post (and be sure to read the comments that follow). If you want to synchronize the document size (so that if one file changes size, the other will, too), you’re out of luck — I can’t think of any good way to do that, though I suppose someone will come up with a script to do it sooner or later.
But there are lots of other things you might change about a document. For example, the definition of color swatches; or definitions of paragraph, character, or object styles; or of text variables; or of the layout on a master page. All these things can be shared across multiple documents… if you put those documents in a book panel.
Watch Out for Page Numbering
Most people use book panels for books (or other multi-file documents that have chapters or sections or whatever). But you can use a book panel for any set of documents that share some attribute. For example, you could use a book panel for all the documents you’ve made for one of your clients — even if the files have nothing in common with each other. In that case, you’re using the panel as a simple project manager that gives you double-click access to any of the files quickly.
However, when you use a book panel in this way, be sure to turn off automatic pagination, or else InDesign will spend forever trying to update the page numbers in your documents. (Which, at best, just wastes time, and at worst will screw up any page numbering you did need there.) To disable pagination, choose Book Page Numbering Options from the book panel flyout menu, and deselect Automatically Update Page & Section Numbers. Do this before you start adding documents to the panel!
Synchronize Across the Book
Once you’ve turned off pagination and added documents to the book panel, you can synchronize various attributes of the document throughout. Which attributes? Choose Synchronize Options from the book panel menu to see (and choose):
Once you’ve made your choices and clicked OK, you need to set which document in your book panel will be the “master” file — the file that InDesign will refer to when it’s synchronizing. By default, it’s the first file in the book panel. To set it to a different document, just click in the left column next to the file in the book panel.
Next, choose which documents you want to synchronize. If you want all the files to be in sync, then either choose them all, or deselect them all by clicking in the blank area at the bottom of the panel. (If none are selected, InDesign assumes you want to sync them all.) To choose some, but not others, use the Shift key (for contiguous selections) or the Command/Ctrl key (for discontiguous selections).
Now click the Sychronize button in the book panel (or choose from the panel menu). InDesign pushes all the selected attributes from the master file to the other files:
- A style, color swatch, variable, numbered list, or master page that is defined in the master file but not in another document gets added to that other document.
- If a setting is named the same in both the master file and another document, the definition for that setting in the master file overrides the one in the non-master document.
- If a setting is not defined in the master file but exists in some other document, it’s left alone. (This means you can have ‘local’ settings that exist in one document that don’t have to be copied into all the others.)
If your sync is just a one-time deal, you could remove the documents from the book panel. But most folks will likely want to keep these files in sync. InDesign doesn’t “auto sync,” so each time you make a change in once place, you’ll need to open the Book panel and click the Synchronize button again.
I wish there were more ways to make documents “sync” to each other. For example, I think it’d be cool if you could link an InDesign document to an external “style sheet” file — perhaps just a text file written almost like a CSS file. Then you could change that style sheet file and the next time you open a document, it looks different! Who knows… perhaps in CS8?
This article was last modified on March 15, 2024
This article was first published on July 29, 2008
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