Hi Keith

Am I right in thinking that you essentially want to create your list of destination reference points in the cross-reference panel all at once via the paragraph style selector then, as you work on your document, insert a reference by selecting it from the cross-reference list? Or use the paragraph style selector to create all references and then have something like a loaded cursor to place them? I wasn’t sure what you meant by “add them in sequence of appearance”.

Creating the list of references is very manual and quite tedious as you say, but when you create the cross reference you also determine any automatic text (e.g. “section “[x-ref chapter no.]” on page “[x-ref page]) as well as being able to apply format (character style), and that might vary, though it sounds like perhaps not in your case.

I use various styles of cross-references in our books and haven’t looked at any scripts or plug-ins, but despite the manual nature I do like the flexibility of output that it allows.

I agree with David though, if you can think of how the feature could work better then provide the feedback to Adobe. I often feel that Indesign development has stagnated, and while I don’t want new features for the sake of them, ideas for workflow improvement from real users are important.

Nick

Hi John

Without more detail about the format of the hyperlinks and locations of linked files, I’d have to guess that the file:// path is reachable from your computer when you view the file in Acrobat (I.e. even if the files are on your intranet, your file system can access them directly), but when you use the cloud version of Acrobat the exported Indesign file is being uploaded to Adobe cloud and the file:// link is not reachable in the same form from there? I don’t use the cloud version of Acrobat but I’m imagining that’s how it would work, same as cloud Word accessing files from OneDrive/Sharepoint but not your local/network files.

Nick

John

You mentioned you are only focused on one book, so some/much of the following only really applies if you expect to do more of this type of work. I produce about 45 books for education ranging from 3 to 20 chapters, and Mike has summarised the key benefits as I would see them too – in particular the management of styles/colours both within a book but also across books.

I would also add a couple more things: reordering chapters is trivially easy by dragging in the book pane; managing situations where you want a fixed number of pages in a chapter is just easier because you can switch off Smart Reflow and work on that chapter alone to fit the content; the text frames in each chapter are easily threaded together via the master page setting and end with each chapter so particularly as the book gets towards proof stage you are less likely to change pagination/have overset text as final edits are made; working with smaller files feels better, whether your system is fast or not; if edits need to be made to a chapter it can be worked on separately and then use Replace Document to slot it in – if you have more than one editor and/or use some kind of version control this is very useful; section page numbering schemes are just a bit easier to manage; and if you have reused content between books then you can have the same chapter file appear in multiple books so you only have to edit in one place. Note that things like find/replace and spell check can still be done on the whole book in one go, but you have to have all the files open and select All Documents in the Search dropdown. Also, if your source material comes from Word, then I would _definitely_ be encouraging my author to have separate chapter files because 300-page Word documents can be a nightmare!

A couple of gripes about working with book files: you still can’t dock the book panel and save it in a workspace, it always comes back as a floating panel and easily hidden behind the application window or on the wrong monitor; if your printer wants you to conform to a page multiple, Preflight can check this but only at a chapter and not a book level, i.e. it doesn’t work; if you use cross-references, Indesign isn’t clever enough to automatically offer the chapter files in the Document dropdown selector, you still have to open them individually from the file dialog.

Even if none of the above really applies, then I would highlight another of Mike’s points, which is file corruption. The number one cause of crashes for me is when Indesign has to reflow text and for whatever reason it just doesn’t like it and boom (repeatable after each recovery with the same edit). Longer documents have more complex reflows. Doing a round-trip via an IDML document to try to clear out whatever invisible cruft is causing the problem is easier when it’s a shorter file and the rest of the book is not affected.

Nick

Hi Austin

What type of PDF are you exporting to? (It will say in the Export dialog box.)

Nick

Re-reading your message, I may not have understood all the detail. You mentioned about deleting lines of text in the master page text box, but one thing to add about the primary text flow frames on the master page is that they cannot already contain any text.

I guess with problems like these it can sometimes help to share an image of the page setup, because for example for your catalogue there may be a different approach to the one you’ve taken for positioning the catalogue entries. I’m guessing you’ve created a grid on the master page with each entry being a separate text frame? And this is what you override on the catalogue pages to position each entry? Is your catalogue entry text one text file, or one file for each entry, or is it in a spreadsheet, for example?

I’m not sure my first answer is much help, but I’m sure what you’re trying to achieve is not too difficult with a bit more context!

Thanks
Nick

Hi Rich

The way the file is called looks like it has been copied onto a Windows/FAT file system which has truncated the file name. That in itself shouldn’t be a problem I don’t think. It’s slightly puzzling that only some files do that, in which case I would double-check that the book file is pointing to the new files and not somehow the originals.

Personally, if I was going to duplicate a book to a new location I would use the Package Book for Print… option along with the “update links” option if appropriate. Not everyone seems to like or trust Package but I have never had a problem with it. That said, my strategy for books is to have a continuous set of files that are the up-to-date master, and every time a book is printed (we do short runs which allows for minor edits between new editions) we keep a static snapshot of that edition using Package. When you have sets of files that have the same or very similar names you do have to be pretty systematic/careful.

Nick

Hi Jeri

This shouldn’t be a problem if you are using paragraph styles for your questions, because you can just create a style for each type, each using a separate numbering List.

So, e.g. ‘SI-question’ paragraph style has definition with Bullets and Numbering > List Type=Numbers, List=SI (you create this as a New List… in the dropdown)
And ‘I-P-question’ paragraph style has Bullets and Numbering > List Type=Numbers, List=I-P (also create this as a new List)

If your equations are literally labelled “I-P eq. 1” then you can include this in the Numbering Style section of Bullets and Numbering as “I-P eq. ^#” for Number.

You would still have to apply the conditional format manually I believe. I can’t immediately think of a clever way of using these styles to select the version that is showing because “Hidden” is (unfortunately) not an attribute you can apply to a paragraph (or character) style, neither can you define a paragraph style as conditional.

Done this way, the equation numbering should be correct regardless of whether one or both types are visible, which is handy for editing/checking consistency of the pairs.

Nick

Hi Arnold

If all you have is a PDF, which I presume you have placed into an Indesign file, then if you also use Illustrator I would try this first:

– see if the PDF has been created using Adobe compatibility settings by trying File > Open in Illustrator. If successful, ungroup/remove clipping paths etc until you are able to select all the objects that have the colour fills/strokes (or select the objects directly in the Layers panel). You can then copy the objects in Illustrator, paste them into an Indesign doc and Indesign will create all the swatches automatically.

If that doesn’t work, you can do this (this method works with placed files including images too):

– create a CC Library for the colours
– in the CC Library pane click the “+” icon at the bottom and select “Extract from image”. This opens Adobe Capture which lets you move the sampling circles to select up to 5 colours from the source. Strictly speaking, it’s creating a tool for creating themes but it will add the colour swatches to the CC Library.
– add the colours to your Swatch panel in the current document if that’s what you want.
– loop this process selecting different sample points if you have more than 5 colours to add. This isn’t solving the problem completely, but sounds a lot quicker than doing it with the dropper.

If you are the agency’s customer, I would probably expect them to provide an Indesign Library that you can import or give access to a Shared CC Library that you can copy swatches from.

Or if you can get a native indd file rather than PDF with the colour samples, e.g. as filled frames, then you select all the frames/objects and from the Swatches panel “Add Unnamed Colours” and it will add swatches for the fill and stroke colours in one go. This is an option when you are working with Illustrator too.

Nick