Trying to attach section markers to content rather than pages in CS4.

October 8, 2012 2:06 AM

Adobe InDesign CS4: I've got a very large document, divided into sections (chapters). Currently, there are section markers on various pages, with each section defined by a labelled submaster (so I can see from the Pages panel where each section begins and ends). When I add content to various sections, the section markers no longer align as the pages reflow (because the markers are attached to the actual page numbers and not the content). How can I fix this so that adding content to sections continues within the submaster style / section marker for that section and not reflow over the pages?
posted by iamkimiam to computers & internet (4 answers total)

InDesign help pages are not addressing this problem, btw. Perhaps I'm not using the proper search terms, but I can't find what I need over there.
posted by iamkimiam at 2:07 AM on October 8, 2012

I don't think there's a way to automate this. You know how you make section starts in Indesign, that little dialog box that pops up? It always wants to start a section on a page and there's no option to say "Move section with content". It's always tied to a page.

I think you're stuck with manually reassigning section starts, since it's all one big document. If the chapters were broken into separate documents and used Indesign's book function, that would probably work the way you want.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:06 AM on October 8, 2012

Ok, I feel like a public dope. After a week of dealing with trying to understand this and immediately after I posted this AskMe, I went back and accidentally separated each section into it's own text frames...that actually caused the addition of pages/content to remain within their own sections. It's pretty genius how it knows what to do, actually. Anyways, thanks for your answer Brandon ... it seems that it works if you don't have one long text flow. The submasters with automatic text flow definitely helps to that end as well. I've been adding content all over the place and haven't had to reassign a section marker once!
posted by iamkimiam at 5:10 AM on October 8, 2012

You know, I briefly thought "what if it's one big text thread" but figured nah, no one would make that much work for themselves!

Anyway, I found this Indesign help page, which describes Indesign's text reflowing properties and the newer Smart Reflow feature (CS5 and up). Could be of use, down the road.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:43 AM on October 8, 2012