Adding, deleting, and moving pages - InDesign Tutorial

- In this movie, I'll show you how to add, delete, and move pages inside a document. I'll start by going up to the Window menu, and choosing the Pages Command, which will once again bring up the Pages Panel. Then, I'll just go ahead and double click on the thumbnail for page two inside the document, and I'll go up to the View menu, and choose Fit Spread in Window, or I can press ctrl + alt + zero or cmd + opt + zero on the Mac so I can easily see both pages. Now I might space bar drag this guy over a little bit. Notice that this headline and this text are violating the margin, which is probably going to work out just fine. We're getting pretty close to that right hand edge. But, because we're working on a facing page document, that text is going to remain legible. Where we start to get into problems, is when things get too close to the spine, which is the intersection of the two facing pages. The reason for that is, when you're thinking of a printed book, for example, the pages are going to curve in toward the spine, and that means we're going to lose a lot of legibility in this region. So what happens if I decide to add a page at this moment in time? I can do that just by clicking on the little page icon at the bottom of the Pages Panel. That will add one new page after the active page. So we now have a new page three. That means if I double click on the four and five, in order to advance to the next spread, I have now changed page three, which used to be a right hand page, into page four, which is now a left hand page, and that means, if I zoom in here, you can see that this stuff, all this text here, the headline and the body copy are going to start curving in toward the spine, which is going to make them quite difficult to read. We have the same problem in this table, over here on what used to be page four, a left hand page, and is now page five, a right hand page. In other words, we've fairly messed things up. Which is why I'm going to get rid of that new page three by clicking on this thumbnail here in the Pages Panel. Then I'll click on the little trash can in the bottom right corner. Notice, I didn't get any warning message or anything along those lines, and that's because that page that I just deleted was totally empty. Now, if I space bar drag over here to this table that is now back on page four, a left hand page, you can see that we are violating the margin, but we're doing so on an outer edge, which is a lot safer proposition. You can also delete multiple pages if you like. For example, notice if I click on the thumbnail for page two, and then shift click on the thumbnail for page five, I select a range of pages. So everything between pages two and five, including pages three and four. That once again is a function of shift clicking here inside the Pages Panel. If you want to select a non-sequential page, then you press the "control" key here on the PC, or the "command" key on the Mac, and click. For example, if I control or command click page eight, I go ahead and select that page, but I do not select pages six through seven. All right, so now let's say I want to delete the pages. I'll click on the trash can icon. This time I get a warning. The reason is, InDesign is telling me that these pages contain objects, both texts and graphics, in other words. "Do you want to delete the pages anyway?" Well of course my answer is no. So I'm going to cancel out, but notice this check box right here, "Don't show again". I very much recommend you leave that check box off. Because this is a really great warning to see. It's not always accurate, as we'll see, but it will give you a little bit of pause so you can decide whether to change your mind. But, let's say I click "OK". I'm just in a reckless mood here, and I get rid of all those pages. Well, you still have the option of undoing that change by going up to the Edit menu and choosing Undo Delete Spreads, or you can press that universal keyboard shortcut of ctrl + z here on the PC or cmd + z on the Mac, and that will go ahead and bring those changes back. Now let's say, what I really want to do is add four new pages between pages five and six. After page five and before page six. I'll go ahead and drag on the bottom of the panel so I have some more room to work. Now, if you want to force the display of a dialogue box in InDesign, and any other Adobe applications as well, then you typically press the "alt" key, or the "option" key on the Mac. That's just something to keep in mind as you discover other portions of InDesign on your own. For example, if I drop down to this little page icon, and I press the "alt" key or the "option" key on the Mac, and click on it, I will bring up the Insert Pages dialogue box. Now, I can say I want four pages this time around. I want to add those pages after page five, or I could switch this to before page and set that value to six instead. Either way is going to do the trick. Then I'll click OK, and you can see that we have four new pages, between what is still page five and what was formerly page five, but is now page 10. Let's say you decide you want to move these pages to a different location. Well, if I click the eight through nine in order to select an entire spread, I can now drag it to a different location like so. If I drag it here, I'm going to add those pages after what was formerly page 12 and is now page 10. If you don't want to do that, press ctrl + z or cmd + z on the Mac to undo, and then drag theses pages someplace else. For example, if I want them to appear between pages 11 and 12, then I can either drop them over here on the right hand side of page 11, or over here on the left hand side of page 12. That will move those pages to that new location. So, pretty straightforward stuff, but it's the kind of thing you do on a regular basis inside InDesign, adding, deleting, and moving pages here inside the Pages Panel.