some progress – I have fnally figured out one way to have the toc appear on the sidebar in ADE, contrary to what Anne Marie Concepcion says (I'm sure she knows a better way but it ain't working for me) by NOT surpressing the document titles in the export This is not ideal as I will have to change the document titles to be what I want to appear in the sidebar but it's s step. However, I deleted the two ducuments from the book that were not appearing as hyper links on the TOC page (though they now appear fine and link up to the right chapter on the sidebar). I reimported them to the book. Re cross-referenced them and the still do not appear as hyperlinks.

InDesign still crashing every single time I export book.

HELP!!! I'm so nearly there and this really is the last step in a five year project. We are going to pick up our adopted baby in Africa in a week and I am desperate to get this finished before we go…..

hello and thank you so much for your reply. I did what you suggest and indeed the bold does come up and no other attributes such as font or size. Likewise, when I put the cursor in to an italic based paragraph style, nothing comes up. So I guess this is right?

We have been watching the Instant Indesign movie about preparing files for an ebook and, if I am understanding it right (which I am clearly not), we have to make sure that everything we have as a paragraph style (like drop caps and first five words capitalized etc) is also a character style, then find and change. before exporting the text for digital. We tried this with the italic sections of the book but clearly we lost all the other formatting (indent, space above etc) so that was a complete mess! I realize you are probably far to busy to explain this, but if any other misunderstandings are screaming out at you please feel free to correct me here…

Thanks so much, You guys are GREAT!

I should have explained, perhaps i was not clear, that in the preferences on our A master (on which all other masters are based) the increments are right for the baseline grid. However when we synchronise, this element does not show up on any new document based on the A master, despite other style changes, grids and guides that do.

thanks david!!! you're back to work fast! so i guess we will do it by hand.

we have been listening you all day on lynda.com so nice to hear you in person! happy new year to you and yours and thanks for all your amazing help!

further update:

have rebuilt preferences according to ann marie concepcions suggestions (for CS2 i could only find that, and there was no second command she speaks of to which i had to answer yes….) with no change.

'no text wrap' works for a text frame that i am dragging from white space on to a colour filled page or on top of an image, so long as i do 'object/arrange/bring to front' afterwards. (surely i shouldn't have to do this as i have dragged it on top?)

however, on a colour filled page or on top of an image (not on white space) often (not always, but on a critical page) the text tool does not draw out a text frame. if i select the text tool the arrow changes from the dotted square icon (indicating its intent to draw out a text frame) to nothing as it crosses into the coloured area. if i draw out a rectangular frame on the coloured area and try to add text to it by selecting text tool or double clicking inside the frame, the text starts at the top of page and not in the text frame as i want.

any more suggestions?