I was working on 400 page book and each lesson consisted of at least 2 files. For a book with 35 lessons, that's around 75 files. That's a lot of InDesign files and completely ridiculous. I then decided that I needed to learn how to merge Indesign documents together and it turned out to be way simpler than I thought.

Like Photoshop, you can drag layers and objects, even an entire file to other documents. What I didn't know about InDesign before was that I can drag pages from the pages panel to another document. It's brilliant, I don't know why I didn't think of looking for this feature before.

I added the files consecutively from beginning to end making those 75 into just 6 files.

First, open a new document, rename the master so it doesn't get confused with the incoming master pages.

Next, open the first document. Go to the Pages and select all of the pages. Then drag and drop them into the new document. When you do, you will get a dialog box asking where you want to insert the incoming pages.

Specify where you want the incoming pages to be placed—after page, before page, at start of document, at end of document.

Delete blank pages at the beginning of the new document once you have part of the first document in the new document. Add as many files as you need to, save, and there you go—a new combined file.


If the first document is using the facing Pages feature and is in spreads, i recommend making sure to have 2 pages in your new document in order to prevent shifting.