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I have such a document:

enter image description here

1) How to merge each spread (two facing pages) into one big page?
For example, how to convert pages 2-3 (each of them A4) into a single A3 landscape page, without having to move all the content manually?

2) When working with Facing pages (File > Document setup), is it possible to remove the fact of having the first page alone? i.e. I'd like first spread to be 1-2, then 3-4, 5-6. This, instead of 1 (alone), 2-3, 4-5, 6-7, etc.

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  • 1
    I'm a bit confused... Isn't your existing answer exactly what you need to do? Why doesn't that work?
    – Cai
    Jul 19, 2017 at 17:24
  • @Cai I was searching without solution during 3 hours, I posted a bounty, and 5 minutes later I found a solution (thus my answer!)
    – Basj
    Jul 19, 2017 at 17:30
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    Oh right sorry, I didn't realise you posted the answer after the bounty! Well at least you found the answer :)
    – Cai
    Jul 19, 2017 at 17:48

3 Answers 3

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1) There is no automatic feature, that I'm aware of, to "merge" pages. You have to do it manually. It's often easy to set up a neww document with pages at the spread size, then just copy from two pages in one document, to one page in the new document. Paste in place --- Command/Ctrl-Option/Alt-Shift-V --- is sometimes helpful with this.

2) Turn off facing pages. You have single pages, then you can shuffle them however you want and create your own spreads. You may need to check the Allow Document Pages to Shuffle Option in the the Pages Panel.
(or uncheck it.. it never seems to reflect the check mark consistently here... sometimes it's checked and I can shuffle.. sometimes it's checked and I can't. Whatever state it's in... you may need to just toggle that option)

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    3) select and group all items on each spread; go into document settings resize to 2x width while disabling facing pages; then clean up orphaned page front cover back cover. This can be done very quickly from 10% zoom (etc)
    – Yorik
    Feb 26, 2016 at 22:37
  • For 1), do we have to do this manually for each page / spread? I haven't found a "Select All" feature that allows to select all objects from all pages... If not 1) is not an option because there are more than 100 pages...
    – Basj
    Jul 19, 2017 at 15:17
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This is finally not needed, because this feature solves everything:

File > Export > Save as type: "Adobe PDF (Interactive)" > Export as: "Spreads"

enter image description here

Example, let's say we have an art book with some photo spread on two pages:

enter image description here

With this "Spreads" feature, we have a big landscape A3 page instead of two A4 portrait pages, in the final PDF:

enter image description here

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  • Not exactly @Metis, in #2 you suggested to "Turn off facing pages" (or maybe I misunderstood your #2?). Here it's a bit different, it's important to keep "Facing pages" on, and then the trick is to "Export Spreads" instead of "Export Pages" in File > Export. (I spent the last three hours trying every possible trick, then I posted a bounty, ... and finally I found this!)
    – Basj
    Jul 19, 2017 at 17:09
  • If your intent was to combine spreads when exporting to PDF, you should have made that clear. Scott’s answer is correct: there is no automated way to do what your question actually asks, which is to combine the pages in the InDesign document. Doing it in a PDF is a different matter, of course.
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Oct 19, 2020 at 15:20
-2

I just realised that when you export you can choose to have the spread instead of singular pages which solves the problem

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  • Thank you for your answer. In order to have a useful answer for future readers, can you edit your answer to include a screenshot?
    – Basj
    Oct 19, 2020 at 14:58
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    This is exactly what an existing answer says.
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Oct 19, 2020 at 15:18

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