Dealing with autonumbering in single long document

Question

I am trying to convert a book that has been created with multiple chapters organised into an .indb file. There are multiple level headers numbered across the chapters. The first "chapter"/InDesign file in the book is the prelims which are numbered differently.

First issue: In5 doesn't work with book files. OK, I have combined everything into one InDesign file.

Second issue: chapter numbering now doesn't work since it is all one chapter. However, section numbering does and I have inserted a section marker before each chapter heading and turned off autonumbering. Works.

Third issue: now headings (A, B and C level) with autonumbering don't work. You can't insert a section marker into the numbering and each level numbers consecutively throughout the document rather than restarting in each "chapter".

Any ideas how to get around this?

Answer 1

I'm not sure it is good to be able to answer one's own question and it is not a complete answer. However, there is always a workaround, isn't there?

I copied the original chapter and book files to a new directory and then used the "Convert Bullets and Numbering to Text" command (select all in text flow and right-click) to do what it says it does. I then replaced the text in the long single document by cutting and pasting.

There was a bit of messing about to sort out some formatting that hadn't come across, but basically problem solved.

HOWEVER, it would make live much simpler if In5 could work with .indb files: please!

Comments

I'm so glad to hear you came up with a workaround. As you know, in5 exports single InDesign files.

To combine multiple files into a single InDesign, you can:

• use the InDesign’s “Move Pages” command to “push” the pages from one InDesign file into another. See bit.ly/1U7gnDm for detailed instructions.
• use the Book panel in InDesign to combine individual files into an InDesign book, and then run the MergeFiles script discussed at bit.ly/1OJIGGN.