Saving Finalized InDesign Documents to STEP

Another important feature of Print Publisher is the ability to save finalized InDesign documents back to STEP. One of the primary reasons to save InDesign documents to STEP is to enable users across an organization or across geography to access these documents, in addition to the following advantages:

Document Visibility in STEP

The documents become visible in STEP, allowing users who do not use InDesign to view the pages in the workbench.

'Referenced By' Product and Entity Data for Publications

It is possible to view the following publication-related information on the Referenced By tab under the Used on Page flipper for both products and entities. The numbers in the below list correspond with the numbers in the screenshot directly below the list.

  1. Which publications the product or entity appears in
  2. Which versions of these publications the product or entity appears in
  3. What page(s) the product or entity appears in within these publications
  4. How much space the product or entity takes up on the page(s) on which it appears (Area Used)
  5. Whether the page type is Actual (a mounted InDesign document) or Planned (a Flatplanner planned page).

Page Data

It is possible to look at a page in STEP and view the following information on the Page Data tab. The numbers in the below list correspond with the numbers in the screenshot directly below the list.

  1. Thumbnail preview of the InDesign page
  2. Page description:
  • STEP ID and Name
  • Date created (when the document was saved to STEP)
  • Status: If the page is in a Flatplanner workflow, the status shows the workflow state that the DTP page is in.
  • Page number
  • Overset: If the page contains text or frames with overset content, meaning there is content on the page that does not fit in one or more frames, then the value will be ‘Yes.’
  1. The list of products used on the page and the space used by each product
  2. The list of classifications used on the page and the space used by each classification
  3. The list of entities used on the page and the space used by each entity
  4. The list of images used on the page

Other Advantages

  • It is possible to reuse product layouts when working with Flatplanner. Refer to Reusing Saved Layouts in the Print Flatplanner documentation here for more information.
  • It is possible to create indexes that list the page numbers of all mounted objects in the publication. Refer to the Creating Document Indexes topic here for more information.

Saving a Mounted Document to STEP

Once you have finalized your mounted page in InDesign, the typical next step is to save it back to STEP.

Though it is optional to save mounted InDesign documents back to STEP, these documents must exist in STEP in order to take full advantage of STEP's publishing capabilities, such as extraction of product indexes and calculation of space usage.

To save a mounted InDesign document back to STEP, follow these steps:

  1. With your mounted document open in InDesign, first save it to your computer's hard drive.

Note: InDesign documents must first be saved locally before they can be saved to STEP.

  1. Next, navigate to STEP > Save Document to DB from the top of the InDesign interface.
  2. In the Save Document to STEP Database dialog box that displays, the section folder from which you mounted your planned page should be automatically selected. If not, navigate to the correct section.

  1. From the dropdown list, select Save Document and Page Information (default) or Save Page Information.

Choose Save Document and Page Information to save page information, such as page numbers and space allocation, into STEP as well as the actual InDesign page itself. This option stores these documents in the database for you and other users to access later.

Select Save Page Information if you would only like to save page information into STEP. This option will save a thumbnail of your page to STEP but not the actual InDesign page itself. Some users may prefer this option in order to save space on their STEP application server.

  1. Check Close document and delete local copy if you would like to save the document to STEP, then have the local copy automatically deleted from your computer.
  2. Click OK. The document is saved back to STEP within the correct publication.