How To Use The Adobe InDesign CC Book Feature

Hi there, in this video we're going to create a Book in InDesign. All a Book does, is I've got three separate documents here. I'm working on them separately with different people. What I'd like to do is join them all up, have the page numbering, or flow through all of them. I'd like all the Styles to match up but I want to easily grab all of these guys, and just create a PDF, and it will stretch all three together and go out to the printers, but I get the benefit of working on three separate InDesign documents. That is a Book. Let's go and learn how to do that now in InDesign.

So to make a Book I'm going to-- first of all, this is the file we've been working on. There's two other files we're going to add to this Book. They're separate files, they're in your… where are they? In '05 Long Documents', there's 'Section 2' and 'Section 3'. So they're separate InDesign documents, and now I want to string them all together. They are separate because we have all decided that everyone's working on different files together. So, me, is working on this file, Jeff is working on this one, and Susan's working on this one. I don't know where I get those names from, but let's just say, for practical purposes, for our work, we need to separate these documents out.

Now the first thing we need to do is, for the document we've been working on let's go to our Master page, and add some automatic page numbering. I'm just going to add it after the Running Header we've got here, and I'm going to say, page-- it's caps, PAGE, then I'm going to go to 'Type'. 'Insert Special Character'. Go to 'Markers', and go to 'Current Page Number', terrible shortcut. So page A, if I go page 1 now, it's going to say 'Page 1', 'Page 3'. So, it's got my page numbering. Same with this document, section 2, you can see, it's got page 1, 3. So it's got automatic page numbering, same with this guy, it says, on the top right here, Page 1.

Next thing we're going to do is create a book. So go to 'File', 'New', and go to 'Book'. 'Books' are those buttons you've never clicked, I bet you. And what it does is it creates a file by itself. It's a weird kind of process, right? So you create a new book, and you're like, "I can't get the file name." So I'm going to call mine 'Maynooth Furniture Catalog Book'. Hit 'Save'. And this thing opens, just a panel. And the other weird thing is that it's not connected to anything that's open. So I can close all of these down. 'Close' you down, 'Save' you. So this thing here can-- he's a Lone Ranger, he can work all by himself, with the documents open, or not. What you need to do is add the documents that you want to join up.

So, I'm going to click on the '+' button and I'm going to add the document from let's say, our 'Coursework', and that's the one I've been working on. I'm also going to add a couple more from my '05 Long Documents' both 'Section 2' and 'Section 3'. Click 'Open'. And then you go to kind of rearrange them to decide who's at the beginning, and who's at the end, because the page numbering, you can see gets made automatically, so I'm going to say, that guy's at the top. And the cool thing about it is, watch if I open up Section 2, by just double clicking in here you'll notice that automatically a couple of things will happen. One is, the page numbering is updated. You can see, my first document gets to page 17. Now this one, automatically is 18, which is cool. It's also rearranged it, so it's a left hand spread because, on this document, it finishes on the right hand spread. So it knows that the next one needs to be at right, so it adjusts that one.

The same thing with Section 3. Again, I don't have to have any of these open. Just kind of re-emphasizing the fact. And I'm going to make a PDF. Now if we go into here, it says, 'Export Selected Documents to PDF', that's because I had Section 2 selected, so if you click off, just make sure nothing is selected, and then you get the option for 'Export Book to PDF', you're the whole thing. Create that, and give it a name, that's fine for me. I'll 'Replace' one, fine. I left mine as Interactive PDF, which is not what I want. So I'm going to go into here, 'Export Book to PDF' and make sure I pick 'PDF (Print)', because this is going to my printer. 'Save'. Just your regular old PDF settings here. I'm going to click on 'Export'. There's some links that are missing, I'm okay with that. And there we have it, we have our Page 1, and our PDF. I'm going to zoom out a little bit, scroll along so I should get down to Page 17. Now it starts moving to 18, it's horrible looking, I understand. It's not my best work, nothing really matches up but it shows you a way of connecting separate documents keeping the page numbering working and exporting them as a PDF altogether.

Another option you can do, back in InDesign here you can just hit 'Print', and that will just print it to your printer. That's an option. This little thing here operates little weirdly as well. You need to kind of save the Book, that's the way to save it.

Another option you can do is, say you're working on a long document but you want to keep consistent Paragraph Styles which is obviously important over a long document. So, let's save that in Section 2. So open that up, and it will open up the document I'm working on. Now the trick is to have, under 'Window', 'Styles', 'Paragraph Styles', is to be all using the same Style name. You'll notice, when we created this document earlier on we created it, and we imported it from Section 2. That was for a reason, because I wanted the Title names to be the same. So I've got these two, Heading 1 and Body Copy 1, but let's say, in Section 2 I'm working on this document, and I'm like "Actually I don't want it to be pink anymore, I want it to be green." And I go into here, my 'Styles', and I'll 'Redefine Style' and it updates everywhere else in this document. I can find them, there it is, Shelves, it's now this green color, but Maynooth, it's still at their original pink color.

So what we can do, doesn't matter which document we have open we can decide who their boss is, it's this little option here. So I'm going to say 'Section 2'. I'm going to set the Style for this guy, this guy is the boss. And what I want to do for these two guys - I'm holding 'Command' to click in these two guys - I can say, it's 'Control' on a PC, have them both selected. You can actually just select them all, and say, let's Synchronize, guys, let's get together, Synchronize. 'Synchronize Book'. And it synchronizes the Styles. And what will happen, hopefully, is, it did. Wasn't checking, went from pink to green. So it's using Section 2 as the leader. You need to kind of force it to synchronize every time, so if you do make changes you need to, say who the boss is, select them all and then click on 'Synchronize'.

So that is how to use a Book. Cool feature, especially good when we're working with really long documents. All right, let's get into the next video.