InDesign is one of the cornerstones of Adobe Creative Suite CS4. The Pages panel is used in InDesign to work with document pages as well as master pages. It allows you to create pages, whether blank or based on a particular master. You can also move, copy and delete pages as well as retrospectively applying a master. It also provides an excellent method of navigating through longer documents. To make the Pages panel visible, choose Window – Pages or press Control+F12 on the keyboard.

The display of pages in the Pages panel is determined by whether or not Facing Pages is being used. This option is normally specified when the document is first created and controls whether the document will consist of individual pages or spreads. If Facing Pages is active, pages will be laid out side by side (two-up) in the Pages panel. If the Facing Pages option is inactive, pages appear single (one-up) in the Pages panel. Additionally, the default master of documents with Facing Pages active will consist of two pages while documents without this option will have a single default master page.

To insert new pages into your document, choose Insert Pages from the Pages panel menu to display the Insert Pages dialog. Here you can specify the number of pages to be added, the position at which the new pages will be inserted and whether they will be based on a master page. A shortcut method is to drag one of the master page icons into the bottom area of the Pages panel, which represents the document pages. This will create a page based on the master in question.

When moving, duplicating or deleting pages in the Pages panel, you may either work with a single page or select several pages. To select several pages, click on the first then hold down Control (Command on a Mac) and click on each of the others. This technique allows you to select a non-contiguous range of pages. To select a block on pages, click on the first page then hold down Shift and click on the last.

To move a page or several pages to a new location within the document, simply drag the selected pages up or down. A bold vertical is displayed as you drag to indicate the new position that the page or pages will occupy. To copy the selected pages, do exactly the same thing but hold down the Alt key on your keyboard. Similarly, to delete the pages, just click on the wastepaper basket icon at the bottom of the Pages panel or choose Delete Spread or Delete Pages from the Pages panel menu.

The writer of this article a trainer and consultant with an IT training company offering Adobe InDesign training classes in London and the UK.