If you’re new around here, I have been creating a series of short tutorials to help with some of my frequently asked questions on using Adobe InDesign.
This week, you’ll learn what parent pages are in Adobe InDesign and how to use them. Note: In 2021 Adobe changed the name of this tool from “master pages” to “parent pages” in an effort to use more inclusive language.
Watch the tutorial below for an InDesign parent page overview. Or keep scrolling for the notes from the video tutorial, if you prefer to read along. And if you’re a fan of YouTube, click here to subscribe to my channel for more design tutorials and tips!
First things first, in 2021, Adobe changed the name of this tool from master pages to parent pages in an effort to use more inclusive language, so if you ever see "master pages" floating around the internet, it's the same as parent pages.
So what are they? Parent pages are like mini templates you can create and use throughout your document for pages that have repeated content on them, like a background, page number, header, or footer.
They’re not part of your page count.
Each one can be a single page or a spread of two pages.
Your Pages pane shows one parent page already created as default. If you’re not seeing your Pages pane, go to Window > Pages to toggle that on.
Double click the icon of a parent page to show it by itself on screen for editing / designing.
As an example, let's say I want a header to appear on every page or even just most pages of my document. I'll draw a text box on my parent page and type in some text so you can see it in action.
Then I can click back to my regular document pages and see that the header now shows up on every page. By default, InDesign automatically applies the default parent page to all pages in your document, but in a future video I’ll show you how to add more parent pages and apply different ones to different pages in your document.
You can still add other content to your document page, but anything that is part of the parent page will always stay in the same place on every page it's applied.
This is a great way to keep repeated content consistent across all your pages.
It also make edits faster – if you find a typo in a running head, you can change it on the parent page once, and it's updated across all the pages where that parent page is applied. A huge time saver!
Want to learn more about InDesign? Check this out 👇
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