InDesign Page Sizing

I have a number of book files laid out in InDesign that need to have their page size reduced without resizing the content. Since I had some difficulty finding precisely my problem, I thought I’d post the solution here, along with a link to the post that pointed me in the right direction.

I started with 8.5″ x 11″ pages on which I had created pages formatted for 6″ x 9″. This works when the resulting file is sent in PDF form to be printed, but I am now creating previews for these books for the Energion Publications retail web site, and needed these previews to have less white space. Each time I’d try to resize the pages following the directions I found in various tutorials and help files, the text boxes would be resized as well.

I found the first hint of a solution in the Adobe Community, Changing page size without changing text boxes. The key element is the liquid layout.

Building on what was in that link, I found that I needed to go to the Pages window, select all the pages, then change all to Re-center. You can leave them all selected and click the “Edit Page Size” button at the bottom of the Pages window and make your changes.

This all assumes that the same size of objects as you already have in your document will actually fit on pages of the new size, which was true in my case.

Hopefully having a very specific post on this topic will help someone who has the same problem find the solution.