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• • May 12, 2011 at 2:05 pm #59583
    AirGuitarRockin

    Participant

    Hello,

    I have a very large (536MB, 170-page) InDesign document that I'm trying to make more 'user-friendly' for both myself and our printer. It's our product catalog, so it contains more than 2,300 linked images, along with several master spreads; tables of text on each page; an index; TOC; and bulleted lists of product features throughout the catalog.

    I inherited this file three years ago, and we've been adding more information and pages to it each year. As it grows, it becomes slower and slower to work with in InDesign (running CS5 on Windows Vista), and I'm afraid that it will crash when I'm working with it. Which brings me to my question: Is there a good way to make this file more manageable?

    I've been reading/researching the book feature and am considering using it for the catalog, but I can't figure out how to split my current document into 20-30 page documents that will function as “chapters.” (I've considered having the current catalog and a new document open at the same time and just dragging the chapter “chunks” over to the new document, but the current catalog file seems to bog down even more and lock up when I have anything else open at the same time.)

    What would be the best way to approach this? (I would really like to avoid rebuilding the entire catalog if at all possible.)

    Thanks for listening! (Nearly all of my InDesign knowledge is self-taught, so I apologize if these are 'duh' questions.)

    Thanks again,

    Beth

  • May 12, 2011 at 3:38 pm #59585
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    I would not drag pages into a new document; weird things can happen. Instead, I would delete pages 30-170 and then do a File > Save a Copy, then File > Revert (or perhaps even just Undo). Then delete 1-29 and 50-170 and save a copy, repeat, etc.

    (You want to make sure you do a save as or save a copy after deleting in order to clean up the extra stuff, so it doesn't get stuck in the file, as per the Lose 20 Pounds in InDesign article Mike Rankin and I did for indesign magazine.)

  • May 12, 2011 at 3:40 pm #59586
    Anne-Marie Concepcion

    Member

    Congratulations on the self-teaching! That's how most of us learned the program. :D

    There is a free script that can split up a long ID file into multiple ID files, it's worth a try.

    The script is here: https://www.scriptopedia.org/in…..Pages.html

    I first wrote about it here: https://creativepro.com/fre…..  (Many comments on this post, some from the script writer, so it'd be good to skim through these so you can see any glitches that might occur.)

    If you've never installed a script or used one, it's pretty simple: https://creativepro.com/how…..design.php

    If the script doesn't work, the old school way would work, which would be to open a copy of the catalog (just in case), delete all of the pages except the first 20 or 30 (your first section), and then choose Save As and give it a name (catalog sec 1); then re-open the full catalog copy and delete all of the pages except for pp 31-60 (or however section 2 would lay out), then Save As section 2; and so on.

    AM

  • May 13, 2011 at 1:52 am #59590
    Ann Farr

    Member

    Isn't there a problem with deleting, say, pages 1-49 if the text flows as one story or one table? Because it just flows along and starts on the page 50 you're left with (don't suppose I'm explaining this very well)? Deleting a page doesn't actually delete any text although you might only find it in the overflow box thingy.

    It would be better to have a script that actually breaks the text where you have the cursor. I know there's a Break Text script that comes with InDesign but I've never been able to make it work, it does very weird things.

    aextra software used to make an absolutely brilliant plugin called Clever TextLink which could break the text in all sorts of ways, was easy and worked every time. But they haven't done anything about CS5 which is a huge shame.

  • May 13, 2011 at 7:16 am #59593
    AirGuitarRockin

    Participant

    Thanks, everyone for the suggestions! I will look into using the script, and if that doesn't work, try the save as option.

    @Ann_Camilla – I don't think I'll have a problem with deleting pages, as none of my text flows from one page to another. (The document contains a separate text box listing the item #, price, etc. for each set of items.)

    One more question – is it necessary for me to create a template document before I can combine all of these new files into a book? Since I will have (hopefully) preserved the layout/design of each section/chapter, I'm not sure how helpful a template would be…

    Thanks! And happy Friday!

  • November 16, 2011 at 6:54 am #61073
    Giveitashot

    Member

    AirGuitarRockin,

    Hope it all worked out for you. I went the opposite direction with our catalog. Like you, except I had originally inherited multiple files (Pagemaker). Then we acquired InDesign, I went to classes to learn InDesign (much of my usable knowledge is also self-taught from sites like this and lurking elsewhere on the net). Initially, I spent a lot of time fixing things from the original Pagemaker file and reducing the number of associated pdf files, re-linking, re-bookmarking, etc. Recently, I decided to merge the InDesign files.

    The bulk of our catalog data is comprised of exploded view 2-D graphics, generated from the original native cad files like Pro/E, Catia, Inventor (exported as pdf), and Bill of Material tables.

    It's 300 pages and currently weighing in at 56MB. I'm going to see if I can remove more 'fat' per some good articles on this site.

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