Each you choose New from the File menu in Adobe InDesign, you may have noticed the option to create a new book without ever knowing exactly what a book is. Well, in fact, books are a really useful feature: they allow you to take a series of related InDesign document and process them as a single entity called a book. All documents in the book can then share the same resources such as paragraph and character styles, swatches, master pages, sections and page numbering.
Having created a book, by choosing File-New-Book, the Book panel is displayed. It contains a panel menu with all the necessary options. The first task is to add documents to the book: from the Book panel menu, choose "Add Document" and select the documents you want to be treated as part of the book. The book panel can now act as a launch pad for each of the documents it contains: simply double-click a document to open it.
The book file can then be saved. The book is a separate file and a separate entity to the documents it contains and the documents in a book do not have to reside in the same location as the book or indeed as each other. To save the book, choose Save Book in the Book panel menu: to save each document in the book, simply used File-Save, as per usual.
Next, elect one of the documents in the book to be treated as the style source. The document chosen as the style source will be used as the master document in the process known as synchronization whereby InDesign replaces the colour swatches and styles of all documents in the book with those in the style source document.
To set page numbering across the whole book, choose Book Page Numbering Options in the Book panel menu. The default is "Automatically Update Page & Section Numbers": this will cause InDesign to number pages in the documents within the book according to the order in which they are listed in the Book panel.
Books are a great tool for division of labour since the fact that a document is part of a book does not stop it from being a regular InDesign document. If a book contains five documents, five different people can work on each of those documents and then, at the end, the whole book can be preflighted, printed and output as PDF as a single unit.
Both tables of contents and indexes can also be generated for the entire book as well as for a single document. Simply create the table of contents or index in the usual way but activate the option "Include Book Documents".
Having created a book, by choosing File-New-Book, the Book panel is displayed. It contains a panel menu with all the necessary options. The first task is to add documents to the book: from the Book panel menu, choose "Add Document" and select the documents you want to be treated as part of the book. The book panel can now act as a launch pad for each of the documents it contains: simply double-click a document to open it.
The book file can then be saved. The book is a separate file and a separate entity to the documents it contains and the documents in a book do not have to reside in the same location as the book or indeed as each other. To save the book, choose Save Book in the Book panel menu: to save each document in the book, simply used File-Save, as per usual.
Next, elect one of the documents in the book to be treated as the style source. The document chosen as the style source will be used as the master document in the process known as synchronization whereby InDesign replaces the colour swatches and styles of all documents in the book with those in the style source document.
To set page numbering across the whole book, choose Book Page Numbering Options in the Book panel menu. The default is "Automatically Update Page & Section Numbers": this will cause InDesign to number pages in the documents within the book according to the order in which they are listed in the Book panel.
Books are a great tool for division of labour since the fact that a document is part of a book does not stop it from being a regular InDesign document. If a book contains five documents, five different people can work on each of those documents and then, at the end, the whole book can be preflighted, printed and output as PDF as a single unit.
Both tables of contents and indexes can also be generated for the entire book as well as for a single document. Simply create the table of contents or index in the usual way but activate the option "Include Book Documents".
About the Author:
The The writer of this article is a training consultant with Macresource Computer Solutions, a UK IT training company offering Adobe Dreamweaver training courses in London and throughout the UK.
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