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InDesign: Facing pages with left page as page number 1

October 14, 2004 2 Comments Written by Cari Jansen


Revision 1.2

You might have some use for the following tip, that I’m just adding, as it is a question I receive often. “Can my left hand page be automatically numbered to page 1 when I am using facing pages?” My answer is: yes, it can. Here are the steps to follow.

Note: If you are using a later version of InDesign, the steps below might no longer make sense – Refer to a rewrite of this blog-post – InDesign: Facing pages with odd-numbered left pages

Numbering and Section options

Start by creating a multiple page facing pages document (tick ‘facing pages’) in the new document dialog box.

screenshot

Double click the tiny little black triangle at the top of page one (this is a section marker). The following dialog box appears.

screenshot

Now enable the Start Page Numbering option and start on page number 2. Click OK to apply.

screenshot

You should now see the pages palette displayed as above. So how can we now renumber this page 2, back to page one without the pages shifting back in order?

screenshot

Start by shift clicking the first and last page in your pages palette (to select all pages). Now, open the pages palette fly-out menu and enable ‘Keep Spread Together”. This will put square brackets around all double page spreads.

screenshot

Now select the section marker again and in the Numbering & Section Options set the Start Page Numbering back to 1.

screenshot

Click OK to apply, and the task is accomplished 🙂

screenshot

Happy master-paging.

Adobe InDesign
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2 Comments
  1. Aaron Aaron
    September 26, 2011    

    Thanks for this, Cari.

    FYI, all: In CS4, the equivalent to ‘Keep Spread Together’ is disabling ‘Allow Selected Spreads to Shuffle’.

    Reply
  2. Henna Pathross Henna Pathross
    February 10, 2009    

    This is great but how does one actually create two different master pages – one for the left and another for the right whereby the margins are actually different? Any help will be much appreciated. Thanks a million!

    Cheers,
    Henna

    Reply

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