Locking book text Indesign

[Guest]

I made a 500 page book in Indesign, with many images. While correcting the text, it constantly shifts, so the text at the end of the book is no longer correct.

Is it possible to lock the text of the entire book before I make a PDF?

[Jongware]

What kind of corrections are you talking about? If this involves deleting or inserting entire paragraphs, then what can you realistically expect? Even adding or removing just a single comma can and will, but, most of all, MUST involve re-flowing the text layout.

Also, what is "not correct at the end"? If by that you mean that headings end up at the bottom of a page, then their style set-up is not correct. With good style definitions you wouldn't get that.

[Danny Whitehead.]

Obviously, editing text in a story effects all the text after it. What is incorrect about it?

[sandy8000]

Short answer is no you can't lock the text in InDesign. Anytime you edit the text the paragraph composer is going to recompose the paragraph. The single line composer has less of a recompose, but you lose the better look of the type that the paragraph composer gives you. If your text must remain page for page after editing the text, you'll need to proof page breaks. You can usually add no breaks here and there, tighten or loosen track on paragraphs to get the page to break the same. If your edits are extensive this won't work.

[amaarora]

Hi,

There is no locking like the way you want.

Since you have a 300+ page document;when you change/edit the text, there may be changes at multiple parts of the document that may be unnoticed. That is, the text is not only incorrect at the end of the book but may be incorrect at some other unidentified places as well.

Like Theumis said above, this can be avoided using good style definations.

I would personally export my document as pdf first, and then make the changes. After i am satisfied with my changes and text edits i would again export to pdf and use the "Compare PDF" feature just to be doubly sured that every text change / any other change has been identified and taken care of.

-Aman

[Barb Binder]

I always have my editor review my files between entering the final edits and sending them out for print. This is a lesson I learned the hard way. Edits cause text to reflow, and yes, we can mitigate it with well-designed styles but nothing eliminates the necessity of human eyes carefully reviewing each page prior to signing off on it.

[Guest]

Thank you all for your comments, both the technical tips and the experience stories help me to find a solution.

This is my first project in Indesign. I learn a lot and make mistakes 🙂 Indeed Barbinder, the hard way ... 🙂

[Danny Whitehead.]

You're very welcome.

You'll probably benefit as much from learning about the principles of typesetting, as you will about InDesign specifically.

Hopefully you're using paragraph styles to format your text. Exploring the 'Keep' options of your styles will probably be useful for your project. You can make entire paragraphs always stay together, make certain headings always appear at the top of the left or right-hand pages, and much more.

[palala fog]

Theresia,

for the future... you may think in applying a colour to the last line of each page in your file.

This method allows you to control the changes.

There are scripts in the web for it.

Ask for it here, if not, and we will provide it.