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Adobe InDesign CC - Essential Training

How do to add automatic page numbering to a InDesign file

Daniel Walter Scott

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Hi there, in this video we're going to look at automatic page numbering, where we can jump to any page, and it automatically knows what page, we don't have to manually type it in. We're going to use the automatic page numbering feature, and the Master Pages. Let's go and do that.

First up, we need to make sure we're on our A-Master. So we want to do it once, and it appears on all the pages. So double click any of these two 'spreads'. I'm going to zoom in. And just double check that you can see down here, it says A-Master. If not, just keeping hitting this, double click until you get in there. What we'll do is, we'll start with the bottom right. I'm going to zoom in a little bit. We're going to grab the 'Type' tool. We're going to draw a 'Type' box anywhere in this white area. Because there's nothing here, it's a bit safe to be drawing on the white now. Let's type in 'Page', 'Space'. And I'm going to now put in automatic page numbering.

So we're going to go up to 'Type', 'Insert Special Character'. There's one in here called 'Markers', and then it's called 'Current Page Number' in a horrible shortcut. Not sure why they decide-- that's the one they use all the time. So we're going to use this. You have to use your two hands and your nose to get that one to work. It says 'Page A', which is a bit weird, and I'm, "Hmm, that's not page 1'. It's because we're on our A- Master. It means that I'm on this A-Master, but if I jump to page 1, look, double click. Hey, I'm on page 1. Double click page 3, I'm on page 3. So that's the automatic page numbering. It puts in A because I'm on my A-Master, but it will adjust for every page.

So let's go back to A-Master, and let's style it a tiny bit. I'm going to select the text. Now, 12 is the default font size, it's too big. 10 point is a nice, good body copy size for page numbers. In terms of the font, I'm just going to put in Arial, we'll look at fancier fonts later on. Arial Bold. And I'm going to make it white, so I have the text selected. Let's go up here, and I'm going to pick 'Paper'. What I also might do is, I'll grab my 'Black Arrow', it's gone. Click anywhere in the center. It's a little hard when you've got nothing to click on. I'm just clicking anywhere in the center of this box. Here he is.

And what I'll do is, highlight the text again and I'm going to get it to go to 'Paragraph'. And I'm going to get it to 'right align'. Just means that when I get up to double digits, maybe 10, it will start pushing away from the side, that way. Let's align it up with the margin there. Now if yours is not aligning up, go to 'View', 'Extras', no, this one here, 'Grids & Guides'. 'Smart Guides' is turned off, I have no idea why. It's been on for the rest of the course. I must have accidentally bumped that shortcut but it doesn't, you'll see smart guides. Smart Guides are amazing.

There's these little lines that appear, now it aligns perfectly. So down here, aligning up nicely. You can use your arrow keys just to push it down a bit further. And there's my page A. What I want to do is copy it. Say I've used 'Command C', on this page, I'm going to do 'Command V'. And I'm going to put it over here. I'm going to get it to align up, but what I'd like to do is highlight text. Is it lining up across spreads? Probably not, it does do it by accident, you can see, the lines kind of dragging out, zoom right out, and those green lines kind of try to align it up. And it does work. Most of the time it works, but it's a little bit hard to do, I guess.

So I'm going to click both of these, and align them. To select more than one object, 'Black Arrow', click on this box once. Hold 'Shift', click on this box. I'll zoom in a little bit. And at the top here, I've got a little shortcut version there, but you can go to 'Window', 'Object', 'Align'. And let's just get them to align. Double check. Nice. So let's double check, page 1 page 2, it says page 2, page 3, it says page 3. And that my friends is automatic page numbering. Let's get on to the next video.