It also will display as single pages, all other instructions to the contrary.) (You might be tempted to click a check box underneath that menu which says, “Open in Full Screen Mode.” Don’t! If you do, your work will display in Acrobat without any of the user interface.

So open File > Properties (Command/Ctrl-D) and, in the Initial View tab, set the Page Layout to “Two-Up (Cover Page).” Make sure the Show Cover Page During Two-Up is selected, too, or else page 1 will become the left-hand part of a two-page spread.īut you don’t want to have to tell your client to do this. Of course, you’d also need to draw your own line in the document to show where the spine is… Blech.Īfter opening the PDF in Acrobat, you can adjust the view (View > Page Display) to show the spreads. But second, all you’re really doing is telling InDesign to pretend that the whole spread is a single page - and that the document is made up of single-sided pages.

It is tempting to turn on the Spreads checkbox (in the Export PDF dialog box) in order to show what the book will look like, but I encourage you not to.įirst of all, as you found out, InDesign cannot merge the two pages (last page of one chapter and the first page of the next) together into a single spread. Making a PDF of a book actually look like a book isn’t as straightforward as you might hope. (This is not for final print, but only to show clients what their pages look like.) If I want to make a pdf, the spread option does not work for the last page from one document and the first page from the next document. With book documents, chapters usually start on a right page. New information below also includes links to other Creative Pro posts about this feature. Editor’s note: Since this post was first published in 2009, Adobe has added the Publish Online feature to InDesign, which could be an improvement on this client proof workflow for some designers.

How to make a pdf into a pages document