Expert: InDesign Pro - 6/16/2009

Question
Hello
I have very new to Indesign (using CS4)having done a 2 day course.  My project at the moment is a booklet of which I have split into 6 seperate files (sections) plus a contents file.  In the Book Panel I have numbered the pages including the contents page using roman numerals.  I have to seperate question with point 1. being my major one.
1. How do I get the page numbers to print on the pages?  If you could guide me step by step I would very much appreciate it.  I have read my manual but my head is spinning.

2. Included in my Book panel I have the front and back cover.  How do I get it so that these files do not have page number?

thank you so much in advance.
Best regs
Jann

Answer
Hi Jann, thanks for the question.

You have your page numbers show up by using master pages. Being new to InDesign, I'm not sure how familiar you are with the different features, so I'll start with the basics and if you need more details, let me know.

Master pages are sort of *background* pages to your document. Anything you place on a master page will appear on inside pages that are associated with that master page. You can have many different master pages. In your case, we're going to start out with and "A-Master" and we also have a "None" master, which we'll leave blank.

Select your A-Master in your Pages panel by double-clicking it. Create a text box in your document where you'd like your page number to be. Place your cursor in the text box and go to your menu bar at the top of your screen and select Insert Auto Page Number under Type > Special Characters. It will appear as a capital letter A on the Master, but will correspond to the number of the page on the inside pages. You can format this text like any other text, font, colour, size, justification, etc. Now make sure you have the A-Master associated with the inside pages you want the page number on by clicking-and-dragging the A-Master icon onto the pages in the Pages panel.

For the second part of your question, to make sure that the page numbers don't show up on the front- and back covers, simply click and drag the None master to those pages and there will be no number on them.

There are many other options for page numbering, so if you have further questions, please do a follow-up.

Good luck!

Scott