This is happening to me as well in CS5.5. I only have 9 files in the book. I have 10.6.7, Indesign CS 5.5.  Could it be a bug?  I've never had this before and I've used the Book feature for years and never had this until I upgraded to 5.5.

Bumping up this thread to see if anyone has figured out anything new regarding this problem. It is really bumming me out. I reported it to Adobe on their bug report/feature request form, but they don't reply back, so I have no idea if anyone is looking into it or not.

Any new thoughts?

Sarah

Thanks, John. If anyone wants to look at this, the files should be available here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/38282222/cs5.5tests.zip

These are just some small excerpt files that show the problem (starting on what should be page 25). Most of my books are giant text books, so the problem becomes quite a bit bigger.

I have also submitted a case to Adobe. Their first suggestion is to export to idml, even though I told them I already tried  that and it doesn't solve the page number problem every time. The Adobe message to me was actually a verbatim copy and paste of Step 1 through 5 from this webpage:  http://www.creativeprogression.com/indesign-book-pdf-export-problem/. Good to know they can use Google, just like me.

Sarah, thanks for posting some files. I just tested them -- I was able to recreate the problem. I then exported the files to IDML, then reimported the IMDL, saved the files, and put them into the book in place of the old files. When I made a PDF, the page numbers were correct -- so the IDML workaround fixed it for me in this situation. I know that in some cases the IDML workaround isn't fixing it for you, though, so I know this doesn't really help you :-(

We have experienced exactly the same problem in ID5.5 on Windows XP SP3.

Also problems with other automated elements (running heads) occasionally containing the wrong text (from a previous chapter of a book) when exporting a whole document to PDF, but not when exporting shorter chunks.

Ivan

For what it's worth, here's what I got from Adobe after several back-and-forth messages:

Thank you for contacting Adobe Technical Support.

As per the discussion with the senior level, I have logged this issue with my Product Team and Engineering Team as Bug # 182559740. Our Engineering Team will look into this issue, and if in the future a resolution or fix is possible, it will be available from the Adobe Systems product update web site: http://www.adobe.com/downloads/updates/

I am closing this case as of now and if you have any new information, please contact us within 14 days, with the details, so that we may re-open this support incident.

I apologize for the inconvenience caused.

Thank you for choosing Adobe.

I'm experiencing a similar problem - Indesign CS5.5 updated to 7.5.1 on a mac running Lion. All pdf-x exports result in errors to do with master page items - wrong page numbers, misplaced text boxes, missing page elements. Of the pdf-x settings, pdf-X-4 works best, but I still need to thoroughly check documents as it still produces incorrect page numbering from time to time. Sat on the phone for an hour with tech support - eventually sent some files to the guy, got a response a few days later asking me to specify a day and time for a call-back - did  so, but no call-back, probably because i'm in South Africa.

Also experiencing problems using variables in running headers - all will be working fine, then suddenly something changes in a document and variables will only work if they are all part of a single story. Never had this in CS4.

Hoping adobe can issue an update to fix these soon - wishing I'd stayed with CS4 a while longer - have wasted many valuable  hours on these problems.

Simonvg, while there is no official solution from Adobe that solves the problem with their code, there are some workarounds that can help resolve issues for many users. For many of us that require the CS5.5 features for EPUB publishing, reverting to previous versions is not an option. I've found that exporting the problematic portions of the book to IDML can often resolve the issue; it's worked in the two books that I'ver personally had the problem in, and it's worked in the majority of people's projects who've reported the issue on my site. It's certainly worth a try.

You can find a complete write-up of the issue with more complete troubleshooting steps at:

http://www.creativeprogression.com/indesign-book-pdf-export-problem/

Again, this isn't a "real" solution, in that Adobe has admitted it's caused by bugs in the book panel that needs to be addressed with a code fix, but for some reason using IDML can sometimes clean up the issue. It's a bit like voodoo, though, as you sometimes have to run through the steps more than one time, and fixing one document might cause other documents to start exibiting issues, so then you have to use IDML with them.

It's unfortunate that while Adobe has been putting so much development energy into cutting edge bells and whistles they've neglected the bread and butter of desktop publishing. All these bugs in basic book publishing, shortcomings in support for book functions, and the complete lack of basic functions like endnotes continue to be real sore points.

and thanks Paul for your write up of the issue - very useful information which I will definitely be using.

Today I installed the latest update for InDesign CS5.5 - the 7.5.2 update, hoping it would fix the problem, and it seems to have partially fixed the problem, in that there do seem to be fewer errors in the pdfs, but the problem is definitely still there, with missing headers and footers in places, missing or moved page numbers, etc. Let's hope they're still working on this.

I just updated InDesign CS5.5 - to 7.5.2 and also have a problem with pagination (in one chapter of a 10 chapter 22 page book) when I export to PDF. Not at all happy about this --didn't expect a bug or have to spend so much time searching for a solution. The IDML solution sounds tedious and also sounds like it causes more problems. Is there an Adobe fix to this? I am under the gun to meet a printing deadline. Also does it matter which kind of PDF I export to? ie PDF/X-1a:2001 or PDF/X-4:2008? Thanks

Have you tried re-creating your book file? I found that the problem seemed to be related to book files that were converted from CS4 when I upgraded. When I created new book files and re-imported my documents, the problem disappeared, at least in the books I was having problems with.