Books: Creating: Free InDesign Tutorial

Topics Covered in This InDesign Tutorial:

Using Multiple Files to Create a Book, Synchronizing Files

Exercise Preview

Exercise Overview

InDesign's Book feature transforms how professionals manage multi-chapter publications. Rather than wrestling with separate documents that drift out of sync, you can link multiple files into a cohesive book structure. In this exercise, you'll combine four documents into a unified publication, gaining the ability to synchronize styles and automatically update table of contents across all chapters—essential skills for managing corporate reports, technical manuals, and multi-part publications efficiently.

Preparation

Before creating your book structure, you'll need to establish your working files. You've already created the master document, yourname-wine1. Now we'll open the remaining template files and save them with your naming convention to maintain file organization and avoid conflicts in collaborative environments.

1. Open the file Wine2.indd.

2. Execute File > Save As, and save it as yourname-wine2.

3. Open the file Wine3.indd.

4. Execute File > Save As, and save it as yourname-wine3.

5. Open the file Wine4.indd.

6. Save it as yourname-wine4.

7. Close all the yourname-wine… files to clear your workspace before proceeding.

Creating the Book

Now that your individual files are prepared, you'll create the book structure that will serve as the master controller for your publication. The Book panel becomes your command center for managing chapter relationships, style consistency, and automated features like page numbering and table of contents generation.

1. Create a new book by navigating to File > New > Book.

2. Name it yourname-wine book.indb and save it into the InDesign Class folder. The .indb extension identifies this as an InDesign book file.

3. In the Book panel that appears, click the Add documents button .

   Your first chapter automatically becomes the style source document—the master that controls formatting consistency across all subsequent chapters. Any paragraph styles, character styles, swatches, and other formatting elements in this master will be synchronized to other chapters. Choose yourname-wine1 for this critical role.

4. Click the Add documents button again to add your second chapter. Choose yourname-wine2. Repeat this process with yourname-wine3 and yourname-wine4.

   NOTE: For efficiency when managing larger publications, you can select multiple files simultaneously by clicking the first file, then Shift–clicking the last file to select the entire range, then clicking Open.

Synchronizing the Book

Synchronization is where InDesign's Book feature demonstrates its true power. This process ensures style consistency across all chapters—critical for maintaining professional standards in corporate publications and eliminating the manual tedium of updating styles in individual documents.

1. In the Book panel, ensure no individual chapters are selected. This step is crucial: with no selection, all documents will be synchronized. If specific chapters are selected, only those documents will receive the synchronization updates.

2. Click the Synchronize button . If InDesign displays a message indicating files may have changed, click OK to proceed—this is normal behavior when styles are being updated across documents.

Updating the Table of Contents for the Entire Book

The final step transforms your individual table of contents into a comprehensive book-wide navigation system. This automated process pulls heading information from all chapters, creating a unified TOC that saves hours of manual updating and ensures accuracy across your entire publication.

1. In the Book panel, double–click yourname-wine1 to open your master document.

2. Navigate to Layout > Table of Contents.

3. Configure the following critical options at the bottom left of the dialog window:
   • Ensure Replace Existing Table of Contents is checked to overwrite your single-document TOC.
   • Check Include Book Documents to pull headings from all chapters in your book.
   • Click OK to generate the comprehensive TOC.

   The expanded TOC will require additional pages to accommodate entries from all chapters. Let's add the necessary space now.

4. Open the Pages panel to manage your document structure.

5. Click on the Table of Contents master page's left page and drag it as shown below to create additional TOC pages:

   

6. Navigate to page i of the document.

7. Locate the red text overflow symbol at the bottom-right corner of the TOC's text frame. Click it with the Selection tool to load the overset text for threading.

8. Navigate to page ii.

9. Click on the main 2-column text frame to flow the additional TOC content into this page.

10. The expanded content will likely require additional pages. To efficiently create multiple pages, access the Pages panel and execute the following drag operation:
    • Drag from the T-Table of Contents master PAGE NAME (not the page thumbnails).
    • Drag to the PAGE NUMBER area beneath the ii–1 spread icons.
    • Ensure your cursor displays the icon as shown below:

    

11. This action generates two additional pages (iii–iv) positioned correctly before page 1 in your document sequence.

12. Return to page ii of the document.

13. Click the red text overflow symbol at the bottom-right corner to load the remaining overset text.

14. Click in the 2-column main text frame on page iii to continue the text flow.

15. Repeat this threading process for any remaining overflow on page iii.

16. Save the file and close it to preserve your completed table of contents.

17. In the Book panel, click the Save the book button . Alternatively, access the panel menu and choose Save Book.

18. Close the Book panel to complete the exercise.