Exporting as ePub

Sometimes when I export a Pages file as an ePub it generates the file iTunesMetadata.plist into the zip file. Other times when re-exporting the same file it does not generate the plist. The plist is not declared in the OPF file, which causes the epub to be rejected as invalid. Without it the file passes validation.
What is this all about?
Is the file iTunesMetadata.plist needed? How do I control it?
Thanks, Tom

I am answering my own question, having worked it out from other sources.
I made the ePub file by exporting from Pages, then loaded it into my iPad for review. That process added the file iTunesMetaData.plist. The solution is to remove that file from the ePub folder or, easier, just re-export a new copy and don't load it to iPad.

Similar Messages

Document to document hyperlinks exported to epub do not work

I've been flooding the forums lately with a lot of ebook questions recently . . . hopefully this will be the last one. I've created multiple documents combined into a book, so that when I export my ebook, I'll get the necessary breaks within the book. However, the cross references/hyperlinks that I've created using text anchors throughout the book only work if the source and destination are in the same document. If I have a source in one document referring to a destination in another document, when I export the epub file, the link only jumps at the source rather than linking to the destination. I've creating the links by selecting the open document from the document drop down and then selecting the destination from the text anchor drop down. It seems to work within ID, but not exported as epub. What am I doing wrong? I really need to fix this problem so my TOCs will work, at least.

You are not doing anything wrong. It a bug in CS5.
What happens is, the reference to the source file drops out of the code line, like this:
<a id="anchor-50-anchor" /><span class="superscript"><a href="#anchor-57-anchor">1</a>
and to should look like this
<a id="anchor-50-anchor" /><span class="superscript"><a href="Notes.xhtml#anchor-57-anchor">1</a>
So you will need to insert to relevant .xhtml file back into the code. I use Dreamweaver for the code stuff (only because it's free with CS package and because if give a preview window)
I doesn't take long to fix...

I think I've found a bug... (CS 4 6.0.4, export to EPUB, w/ test case)

Hi everyone,
I think I've found a bug. I suppose I would like to see if others can reproduce it - I've managed to on 2 work machines, but the more the merrier. I suppose I'm also hoping that giving this bug more exposure will increase the likelihood of it getting resolved. I can dream
The bug shows itself when exporting an InDesign document (or book) to "Digital Editions", or as an EPUB file. The InDesign source needs to have a Table of Contents, and this TOC has to be used by the EPUB to create TOC entries (see the "contents" tab of the export window). In certain cases, using the InDesign TOC causes the EPUB export to garble certain characters; unicode-specific characters, in my experience.
Steps to reproduce:
Create a new document, add a blank text frame and fill it with placeholder text. add a heading to this text frame, styled appropriately.
Create a table of contents, using the heading style you defined and used previously.
Add some unicode characters to the end of your text frame. I've been using "bêche-de-mer — a genus", which has 2 unicode characters. My tests have shown about 1715 characters in the text frame is enough to trigger this bug.
Save the document and export to digital editions. under the "contents" tab, check the "include indesign TOC entries" option.
Open the EPUB (or unzip it and view the xhtml content). I would expect to see "bêche-de-mer — a genus" at the end. However, I see something more like "b√™che-de-mer ‚Äî a genus" instead. I do see the correct output if I don't check the "include indesign TOC entries" option when exporting to EPUB.
I've confirmed the fonts I've tried are unicode-compliant and have the relevant character codes. I'm running the latest update to InDesign CS4 (6.0.4) on OSX 10.4.11. This character encoding problem doesn't manifest itself in the PDF or IDML export, only the EPUB export. Choosing whether or not to include embedded fonts in the EPUB doesn't make a difference to the outcome. I have run this test on my machine and a workmates, which is OSX 10.5.[something]
I'll attach a test document to see if others can reproduce this bug. I'd be interested to hear if others can, or cannot reproduce it. I have submitted a bug report at https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform, but that doesn't exactly imbue me with confidence that anything will get done in a hurry...
This problem is pretty annoying; I can either have EPUB navigation, or uncorrupt text. My current (proposed) workaround is for the operator to create 2 EPUBs, one with a TOC and one without, and merge the two together... EPUB transplant if you will. A bit ugly....
thanks for listening!

Hiya Joe (and Archie)
It is indeed an annoying bug - I spent a few days looking around it before posting (wow, it must be nearly a year ago now).
Fortunately, it really is straightforward (if a bit of a hassle) to workaround:
- make 2 EPUBs, identical except one will have a TOC generated (epub-a), the other will not (epub-b)
- extract the TOC file from epub-a and insert it into epub-b
remembering that EPUB is a zip package, this is very easy indeed. On OSX you have /usr/bin/zip and /usr/bin/unzip to assist with extraction / insertion in a script (bash, applescript, etc). I don't think Windows comes with command-line zip programs, so you'd need to hunt around a bit.
Good luck. I don't know if this is resolved in the latest 6.0.5 patch - if you haven't updated to that, it might be worth a shot. And if you have and it's still a problem, please respond to this message just so there's a log stating as much.
Steve

Recent InDesign change suppresses non-printing layers when exporting to EPUB

I hate it when development teams quiety "fix" features I've come to rely on.
I am using InDesign CC 9.2.
Until a recent update, when I exported a book to EPUB from InDesign, layers which were set to show but not print were included in the export. I relied on this because my documents include a non-printed Table of Contents block on the first page of each piece included in the anthology. This block causes the correct page to be set when generating the TOC (notice that it's on the page facing the title, not the title page itself) and is used to print the correct title on the title page of each story and running headers throughout the body.
(An example document - Click for full size)
Up to at least January 2014, when I exported to EPUB, that visible-but-not-printed block was included in the XHTML output. I could then modify CSS to optimize for e-reader display and the title and author names would appear at the top of each piece. Sometime within the past couple of months, that has changed: layers that are not printed also do not export to EPUB. This wouldn't be so big a problem except that the printed title in the image above also is not output to the EPUB file, because it's a text variable in the underlying master page.
If you like reading and messing with markup, as I do, the next two images illustrate the problem.
(The old output - Click for full size)
The new output:
(The new output - Click for full size)
I have five volumes of the anthology so far (comprising roughly 30 stories each) with a new one coming out every three months. Now that this change has been thrown at me, I need to get it resolved or come up with a good workaround while I only have a couple hundred documents to update, instead of double that a year from now.
Thank you for any help or suggestions you can provide!

Going back through every document to override Master Page objects just to get the elements to export is not a realistic workaround.
The change that suppresses visible but non-printing objects is annoying, but at least it's a documented change in 9.2. The change that suppresses all Master Page elements as well is not documented (or at least not documented in an obvious way) and so to me it's a bug.
Ideally, if these new changes are required by some users, the old behavior could at least become an option: the export to EPUB dialog could add checkboxes for "Include non-printing objects" and/or "Include Master Page elements" so that users like me are not left with no way to continue to use existing functionality.

Image quality seems poor when exporting to ePub (even on max)

Hello all,
I've been using InDesign to prep a book for export to ePub format, and it will include several images. Things are going fairly well now that I finally think I've got my mind around the way InDesign works and how to think/prep in advance (i.e. get the Masters right and think 'styles' for as much as possible).
But, when I get things exported to ePub format, I've noticed that the images seem to loose resolution even when I choose jpeg at the maximum setting. Where it's most obvious is when there is text in parts of an image (like text on a map), and at smaller fonts the text becomes blurry and unreadable. The image is pristine and sharp in Photoshop, and is very clear in InDesign doing the layout, and even if I simply save it as a jpeg in Photoshop it stays sharp and things are clear and ledgible. But...
...From InDesign...exported to ePub format using the maximum settings...it ends up soft, or a bit fuzzy, to the extent that whether viewing in Digital Editions or ePubReader in Firefox, the smaller text is virtually unreadable.
Anyone have any ideas why this happens? I could consider making the initial image some much-larger size and hope that when it shrinks to fit the reader window maybe it will still be clear. But I've read that 'best practice' is to keep the image between 300 and 600 pixels in width, so I've made sure it was a bit less that 600. Regardless, it just isn't good enough as it is now.
Any suggestions will be appreciated.
-T

I'm having the same problem. About 4 out of every ten images are exported at half the resolution of the rest -- looking at the images in Photoshop each apparent "pixel" is actually 2 x 2 pixels across.
This occurs both at "high" and "maximum" settings, the images are still borked and the only difference is the resultant file size.
I've read the PDF referred to in the reply but it says nothing about this.
My guess is that this is a bug triggered by certain dimensional inputs to the exporter (a la the Photoshop bug where rotating pixels 90° causes artifacts when the area involved is an even number of pixels by an odd number of pixels -- see http://bjango.com/articles/photoshopcs6wishlist/ ).

HT4168 Pages export to ePub - unwanted question marks

When I export a Pages doc to ePub, a question mark appears at the end of every line. How can I avoid that? If I take the Export to ePub doc from Apple and export it, no problem. If I add some lines of my own at the end and then re-export, question marks appear at the end of the lines I have added. It's driving me nuts! Any advice would be appreciated.

How did you buy Pages?
Which MacOs system do you have on your computer?
What is the exact message you get?
Which version of Pages do you have?
Please answer all questions and if you don't know how ask again.

I am exporting a Pages document to Epub and Pages is compressing my jpg images. How do I keep the original jpg size during the export to epub process?

I am exporting a Pages document to Epub and Pages is compressing my jpg images (I think to 72 dpi from original 600 dpi).
How do I keep the original jpg size during the export to epub process?

We are still trying learn how to use Pages to build ePub documents with high resolution graphics that will expand clearly when they are tapped. Very large screen shots are my example here.

Pages 09 will not Export to ePub

I have Pages 09 version 4.1. I've written all my content and added all the pictures for each page of content for my eBook on Pages 09.
My understanding is that ePub is one of the main formats people want when they buy/read an eBook. For this reason I'd very much like to export my work on Pages to the ePub format.
When I open pages, go to file, export and click on ePub it says "Page layout documents cannot be exported to the ePub format." There are 4 other formats available: PDF, Word, RTF and Plain Text which appear to work.
Under Compatibility and sharing Apple writes " You can also save your Pages documents as RTF files or as plain text. Or export them as ePub or PDF files" apple.com/iwork/pages/
I've signed up at one of the top self publishing book and eBook services online but even their export tool isn't working with formatting my Pages 09 work to ePub.
Could anyone here share with me exactly what I need to do?
I really need to get this project finished as soon as possible.
Sincerely,
Dave

Hi fruhulda, Thank you for attempting to explain this to me.
When I go to the the first link you gave # 7 says "To export your Pages document as an ePub document, choose File, Export and make sure ePub is selected as the export format."
From what I read on the page, I've done what needs to be done to export to ePub.
I'v simply created my work in Pages 09, I went to pages, chose a template, wrote content, added pics numbered pages ETC, saved it to documents then I open the pages document, What I made comes up and I go to file, then export and then click epub but when I click on epub, the only option is to choose another format or cancel, the next button goes away. (the next button doesn't actually go away but it becomes non-clickable)
When you say " The message you have got tells you that you have used the Page Layout template instead of the Word Processing one you need for creating an ePub document."
I'm not sure if you're saying I've done something wrong. If so, where did I go wrong? Was I not supposed to use a template?
Thanks again,
Dave

Pages won't export to epub

I have a file.pages file which I'm trying to export to ePub format; however, when I do the export, Pages creates a blank icon on my desktop which I can't open with any application. I've tried Author and Publisher, but no luck. Has anyone seen this before?

The normal apps to open an .epub file would be Calibre or Adobe Digital Editions or Kitabu or Bookle or the Firefox addon Epubreader (not the stuff you mentioned).
Do any of those work for you?
On an iOS device, you would use the iBooks app.

Pages export to ePub and retaining italics

Is there a method to retain italics when exporting to ePub?
Thanks

It would be a good idea to look at :
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4168
and
http://images.apple.com/support/pages/docs/ePubBest_PracticesEN.zip
If you applied italic without using a named style, I'm not surprised that you loose it.
Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) jeudi 3 mars 2011 17:33:27

Incorrect images from .indb file export to ePub in Indesign CS6

I am having problems exporting images to ePub and get a different result from the same file depending on whether I export directly from the .indd file or from the .indb file.
When I export to ePub from the individual chapter (.indd) file, everything is fine and the images appear in the correct locations where they have been anchored.
When I export via the book (.indb) file, images are being replaced with the incorrect file in the resulting ePub.
Looking at the HTML, it seems not all images are being exported from the .indb file and when the image is missing, Indesign is substituting the next available image from the alphabetical list in the images folder so I'm getting incorrect images peppered throughout the book.
Any idea where I've gone wrong and how to fix it? I've produced several ePubs with images and never come across this before.
More details on how I've set up the files and any other info I think might be relevant below if needed.
- I'm using Indesign CS6 (8.0.1)
- I'm producing an 11 chapter book.
- Each chapter is a separate .indd file for ease of editing.
- These 11 files have been added to an .indb file for export to ePub.
- Images are all anchored to their captions within the text.
- On Export to ePub settings for images I have selected to insert a page break before the image and that settings apply to anchopred objects.
Nothing else is selected (I don't want to preserve appearance from layout.)
- I'm using the Articles panel feature for order of content.
- In the original file supplied, the images were placed as .tiff images. I saved them to jpeg and relinked them using the "relink to folder" and "match same file but this extension" options.
- No links are flagged as missing.
Any help much appreciated.

The solution points to how, it appears, the book panel export is functioning: each file exports a set of tags referenced to itself; file01 adds a "1" to its tags, and so forth. What I was able to do was use a file referencing all of the tags in the style suite in two ways:
first, I exported to an epub the single file, creating a fairly clean CSS, which I then extracted and renamed;
then, making certain that file was the "source" file in the book panel, I mapped for export all of the tags, being careful to be certain each tag/class combo was same as in renamed clean CSS;
I synchronized the whole shebang;
I exported to epub, adding my clean CSS as an external style sheet, selecting only "include embeddable fonts".
Bingo!

Why does ID create a CSS when option is not selected in export to ePub?

I am using InDesign 6 to create ePub books. I want to use my own CSS so in the Export to ePub options I am leaving the setting "Include Style definitions" unchecked. I then list my CSS under additional CSS. When I create the ePub and then examine the files included I see that there are 2 CSSs, mine and one created by InDesign. Why does InDesign create a CSS when the "Inlcude Sytle definitions" is left unchecked?

Because that is the way that CS6 exported EPUB.
EPUB is a fast moving target and has moved way beyond what CS6 can export. With each update from InDesign CS6 to InDesign CC to InDesign CC 2014, and even to the latest update to CC in October, there have been major changes to how InDesign exports EPUB. It no longer does it that way, and you have much more control over the process in InDesign CC.
Because InDesign CS6 is never going to change, it's best to work at modifying what they do export, unless you want to upgrade to InDesign CC.

Need Help with Export to ePub in CS5.5

I am working on my first ePub in InDesign 5.5. When I go to File—Export for— there is no option for ePub. In fact there is only "Buzzword" and it grayed out. How do I get export for epub?

In InDesign CS 5.5, it's File > Export > EPUB.
However, if this is new for you, if you haven't prepared your file properly, it may come out like mush.
You need to prepare export order, styling of paragraph styles, character styles and object styles, you need to create a TOC style, there are many steps.
I highly recommend one of these two resources:
Anne-Marie Concepcion has a video series on Lynda.com for CS5.5:
http://www.lynda.com/InDesign-CS5-5-tutorials/to-EPUB-Kindle-and-iPad/82258-2.html
You can get a week trial for free.
You can also get eBooks from Elizabeth Castro:
http://www.elizabethcastro.com/epub/

How to add interactivity to files that will be exported as .epub

We're creating a short ebook for internal use and are having difficulties with adding interactive features. Not sure if it's the limitation of .epub files, although they are advertised as being able to be made media-rich on the adobe site.
Hyperlinks aren't clickable.
Videos don't pause.
Interactive buttons (for use on a checklist) don't work.
Pan and zoom on photos doesn't work.
I realize that these items would probably work if we were creating a folio, but since that's a 10 step process, and you need to have the adobe content viewer installed on your device to read them, we figured .epub would be a better way.
I'm using a mac.
I'm creating the file in indesign 2014,
The document set-up is for Digital Publishing, iPad resolution.
I'm using the various interactive features that are available.
I export as .epub, open on my iPad and nothing works except a video that doesn't pause.

You do not create movieclips on the timeline using code, though you can create them and add them as children of something that has been manually placed in the timeline.
To create a MovieClip using code you use:
    var mc:MovieClip = new MovieClip();
If you need to add an image, then however you intend to acquire the image, after it has been acquired, you add it to the MovieClip using:
    mc.addChild(img);
where img is the instance of whatever form of object the image takes (Bitmap, Loader)
If you need to add a TextField to the MovieClip then you use:
    var tf:TextField = new TextField();
    mc.addChild(tf);
and you can set up properties for the textfield such as the font and color and position as well after it has been instantiated (the first line).

Cs4.. nook export for epub skipping pages.

I have a book .indb file. Has 335 chapters in it. But each page is small. If I try to export a file for digital editions it skipps pages at after a certain page. I checked out which page was the last processed. Then checked the other pages out all around it. There is nothing wrong with these pages. So I made two smaller book files of the .indb type.
Thinking I would narrow down the problem page.
Part1: export created an .epub file... no pages skipped!
Part2: export said it skipped the last three pages. Still gave me visible pages up to the last three pages. Just what I thought if the error stated ...it skipped 3 pages.
So I thought it could be memory. I only have 1gig of ram right now.
I decided to see if I reduced the number of chapters or pages in Part2 and included the last three that were skipped maybe they would process.
So somewhere way above the last 3 ... I deleted 5 chapters .. they were up toward the beginning of the file. Nowhere near the last three.
The entire part2 of the book file excluding the 5 I delete still including the last three pages processed. There was nothing wrong with the skipped pages. So my question is. .. could it be because I only have 1gig of ram?
When a book file exports to digital editions, all chapters are being held in memory right... so maybe it couldn't process the last three. Any thoughts?
Thanks!

I really hate to tell you this. InDesign CS4 was the first version to support export to EPUB. Virtually no one used it. It was very limited and very buggy.
You really need to be using a later version of InDesign, especially with a very large book. If you're having problems, I'm not surprised.
There were improvements in CS5, and major improvements in CS5.5, CS6 and CC.

Exporting to ePub is weird

I created a list of movies I own, so I can look at it when in stores to be sure I don't buy duplicates.
The result, I discovered, was one movie title per page.
It's listed as:
1) Title1
2) Title2
3) Title3
Also tried it as:
1 Title1
2 Title2
3 Title3
Both ways, when exported to ePub and put in iTunes to transfer to my iPod touch, I discovered that it's just one line per page.
Why is this? How can I prevent it from happening in Pages?

fruhulda wrote:
I must confess I didn't test it from the posting. The link is within the other link and from there it works fine!
Yes it does because it's not enclosed between underscore characters.
The stripped version :
http://images.apple.com/support/pages/docs/ePubBest_PracticesEN.zip
behave flawlessly
Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) jeudi 27 janvier 2011 18:09:01

Exporting as ePub

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for