How to get book to open chapters relative to current path?

[jackz73454476]

If I copy a folder that contains an indesign book and chapters to a new folder, when I open the book in the new folder, it continues to refer to the chapter files in their original location instead of using a referential path. Is there a preference to change this?

[amaarora · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Yes you are correct, when you copy paste the folder with the book and the chapter to a new folder -> then the book will continue to refer to the chapter files in their original location instead of using a referential path. There is no preference to set this.

Your only option is to add the chapter files again to the book with the new location.

Or...

Click on the chapter file and then from books panel menu choose the "Replace Document" option to replace the path separately for each chapter file.

-Aman

[jackz73454476]

wow! I have to say that the lack of referential paths within a book seems like a huge miss. I don't know if any other modern program that won't pick up it's include files relative to the current path without having to delete them and re-add them. This makes it extremely inconvenient to handle multiple contributors.

[Steve Werner]

You can add a feature request here:

Feature Requests/Bug Reports

[jackz73454476]

if they haven't added such a basic feature and they're up to cc2017, i'm not going to bother. Indesign seems like an unwanted orphan child. So buggy!

[Steve Werner]

That is not my experience at all with InDesign. There are bugs but the InDesign team has been working especially hard the past year to eradicate as many as possible. The participation on this forum from InDesign engineers has gone up about a 1000%.

Your request about book files is the first time I've heard it from my book customers but you should post the request any way. I could be wrong.

[amaarora]

Hi,

Also, this not such a "basic feature" to implement. Unless the book is opened from the books panel it is impossible to determine the documents that are part of the book.

Thanks Steve. We have surely been working hard to resolve major pain points.

-Aman

[jackz73454476]

well of course the book should be opened from the books panel but every other document program i've ever used including word, framemaker, quark, etc., all are able to handle relative paths. It's actually a programming 101 task. Not complicated at all. If indesign can handle re-linked graphics, it's capable of handling relative file paths. In fact, it *DOES* handle relative paths with linked graphics ironically. Just not book chapters.

Regarding reliability, there are all kinds of refresh issues when adjusting a cropped graphic within a frame and frequent crashes when running while the books are on a network server, frustratingly when you save so the document becomes corrupt.

more than 50% of the time when I move a cropped graphic within a frame, I have to page up and page down to get the rest of the content on the page to refresh.

And another dealbreaker is opening a book I wrote in 2004 only to find out that indesign won't open it because i no longer have the numbering plugin I used 13 years ago. Why it can't automatically strip that out per/user request is beyond me. I found a copy of the plugin but it will not work in window 10 so I'm going to have to commision a windows xp machine to be able to load my book and save it in portable format. HORRIBLE!

[Laubender]

Hi Jack,

another potential field of problems are InDesign pages placed in InDesign documents.

If one opens an old book file with a newer InDesign version, InDesign would tell you that the links should be updated.

Or the other problem with hyperlinks that point to destinations in other documents of the book.
You have to go through the hyperlinks and update them as well.

And as you already mentioned, there is no good way of doing versioning with book files other than doing new book files with new documents. I think, Steve is wrong here. That his customers never complained does not mean that others do not struggle with the book file workflow in InDesign.

If I can avoid it, I will not build a workflow on InDesign's book feature.

To support you a tiny bit with duplicating book files and their contents, I'd like to point you to a script by Martin Fischer — bookOfSelectedFolder.jsx — that will create a book out of all InDesign documents found in a folder using the name of the folder as base name for the book file:

Indesign Script - Buch erstellen mit InDesign-Dateien eines ausgewählten Verzeichnisses

There is no special sort algorithm for adding the documents so it is recommended to use file names starting with 001, 002 etc. However, there is some error handling if documents cannot be added to a book. One reason for that is that the version of InDesign using the script may not match the version of documents you like to add.

Hidden features of the script:

[1] Add also documents from subfolders.
For that simply change the script code line

var myScanSubfolders = false;

to:

var myScanSubfolders = true;

[2] Do you need a prefix name for your books?

Just change this line of code:

var myPrefix = ''; //'Buch_';

to:

var myPrefix = 'Book_'; //'Buch_';

Just tested Martin's script with InDesign CS6 v 8.1.0 on Mac OS X 10.6.8.

It should also run with CC 2017.1.

Regards,
Uwe

[Laubender]

Note: Just detected a small bug with Martin's script bookOfSelectedFolder.jsx:
If I select a folder for naming the book the parent's folder name will be also added to the name of the book.

Have to investigate the cause for this.

Regards,
Uwe

[jackz73454476]

what happens with cross references when you use that script?

[Laubender]

Hi Jack,

nothing special.

That means: Cross references will still point to the wrong documents if you will just duplicate docs from the originals to a new folder and rename them.

Regards,
Uwe

[raphael_matto]

I wrote a script that updates the paths, tested on MacOs: https://github.com/raphaelmatto/indesign