Hi, this is Anne with Graphic Design How-To,
and today I'm going to show you how to add page numbers to all the artboards in your Illustrator
document. Alright, let's get started. [Music] Now, Illustrator doesn't have a
built-in capability to do this, but Katja Bjerrum over at Productivista.com
has figured out a way by writing a script, a free script that anyone can download. And
while you're there, check out the rest of the site. She is really amazing at both
writing scripts and just Illustrator in general. And I made another video about one
of her scripts if you want to check that out. It'll be right up here at the top of your
screen. Alright, so let's head over there. Okay, so I'm here at Productivista.com, and we're
going to want to go here to Scripts and then come down to the very bottom to the PageIndexer
script. And I'll also leave a direct link in the description below. I'm going to click on
PageIndexer. I'm going to come up here–this is on Chrome–and then go to the download itself.
And when you do that, it actually just unzips it. Another way to do this, if you're on a PC or
something, you can just go to your downloads. It should be over here in your favorites, and
then double-click or right-click and choose Extract on the zip file. And you should
end up with this PageIndexer.jsx document. Now, we'll want to go ahead and install this in
our Scripts folder. So, I'm going to get a new window up. On a Mac, you'll hit Shift + Command +
A, and that will get me to my Applications folder. Then you'll go to the version of
Illustrator that you use the most often, then go to Presets > en_US, and then Scripts right
down here. And I'm just going to go back to my downloads and drag that in there. We'll have
to authenticate with a username and password, and this will be the same one that
you use to install anything. Now, you only have to do this once. After this,
Illustrator will always have this as an option. If you're on a PC 32-bit, you'll want to go to
C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator 2023\Presets\en_US\Scripts. And then, on a 64-bit
one, here's the path for that. Now, after this, you'll need to restart Illustrator. But as I said,
you only have to do this once, and then the script will always be in your Scripts list.
Okay, so I'm here in Illustrator, and I'm going to open up a sample file with a
whole bunch of pages. So, I'll come up here to File > Open and open that up. But you can use
whatever document you need this for, of course. Now, there are two ways for how you want your page
numbers to appear. If you want your page number to have one digit like this, you'll need to type <p>
and if you want it to have two digits like this, you'll need to type <pp>. If you're used to
HTML, this is how tags are usually written. You can also add the total number of pages as one
or two digits, and this document has 10 pages. So, if you want to do that, it will be
"<ps>". And because this has 10 pages, it's going to be exactly the same with the
two-digit version. So, this would be "<pps>". So, those are the codes that you need
to put on the page here. When you're writing your page number text, you'll want
to use a text frame. You can use Point text, which is when you get on your text tool, you just
click once and then type "<p>" for example. But even if you center this on the page and you run
this script, this is not going to stay centered. So, the best thing, in my opinion, to do is to do
a text frame. I'll just draw that. I'll type my page tag. I'll get back on my selection tool. I'm
going to just horizontally align this to center. And also centering the paragraph by hitting Shift
+ Command + C on a Mac or Shift + Ctrl + C on a PC. You can also open your paragraph panel
and choose the center alignment. It's doing the same thing. If you're not seeing any of
these panels, they are all under Window. This one is under Type and Paragraph right here.
You can have other words in your text frame. That's just fine. So, I'm going to put "Page"
and then we'll have the actual page number here. And I'll add "of <ps>" and that is the
number of pages in the whole document. So, after we run it, it should say "Page 1
of 10". I also want to change my font, so I'll do that real quick. I like Montserrat.
And we'll just put it at Montserrat Semi-Bold. I'm going to go ahead and just delete these
other things. So, that is the first thing you need to do. You need to use the code that will
allow the script to know it's a page number. The second thing you need to do is open your
Layers panel. To do that, we'll hit F7 on the keyboard. It's also under Window > Layers
right here. I'm going to move this up here, and I'll just do the dropdown. Make sure your
page number text frame is highlighted. You'll be able to see that in your Layers panel.
It'll have a little blue square next to it. Now, we need to rename this, and renaming
this tells the script, "Hey, this is a page number." So, you'll need to put "Page Nr". And
I'll just put it on the page itself so you can see what it looks like in my Layers panel. I
suppose I could make this a little bigger too. We'll go to File > Scripts > Page Indexer.
And now you can see what it's done. It's added the page numbers to all 10 pages.
Okay, so now I'm going to go over some tips for using this. This is not like InDesign where
if you reorder your pages, it'll automatically update. You'll have to run this script again if
you want different things on different pages. Tip: Keep a template document for later use.
Once you set this up with "Page <p> of <ps>", or whatever, it's a good idea to keep this text
frame in a document somewhere so you can use it as a template and just copy and paste it into your
new document. It will already be named correctly in your Layers panel. Then, all you would have to
do is change your font and colors and that kind of thing to match your new document, run the script,
and it'll automatically put all the numbers on. Tip: Make sure your artboards are ordered
correctly. Another thing to note is that the artboards, the numbers of the artboards, go off
the numbers here on the left side. So, even though this says "Artboard 1", you can move this down
here, and now it's "Artboard 5" and it's going to be labeled as "Page 5". I'll undo that. So it's
good to make sure that all of your artboards are actually in the correct order in your Artboards
panel. This panel is also under Window. Tip: Get numbers to start on a specific page.
Let's say we want it to start on page 5, so we would want page 5 to actually say "Page 1". And
this is pretty common in a lot of books. You know, you have your first four pages that don't really
have to do with the rest of the book, and then page 1 starts on the fifth page, ror example.
In that case, open up your Artboards panel, select Artboards 1 through 4, and just drag them
to the bottom. So now it sees "Artboard 5" as "Page 1". Now, when we run the script (File
> Scripts > Page Indexer), when we come down here to page 5, we can see it's "Page 1" now.
You might have noticed that all of these page numbers kind of drifted upward. I've noticed that
whenever I change the artboard locations. So, if that's the case, you can always just select those
and pull them back down. And if you're having trouble selecting them because of other things
on the page, undo it and put this on a new layer. So, we've got "Layer 1" here. I'll make a new
layer and put it on there. We'll rerun it, and now I can lock this lower layer. So now if I select
everything, I only have the page numbers, and I can move them around and that kind of thing. And
then these top four pages won't have page numbers, so you can just select those and delete them.
Also, in this case, you wouldn't want it to say "Page 1 of 10" because when you get out here, you
only have six of ten. So, I would leave "of 10" off in this case, and that is the "<ps>" code.
So, after you're done with this, you can always take these artboards and
move them back up to the top. It won't change the page numbering, as I mentioned before.
Scenario: Get numbers to alternate left to right. So, what if you want every other number
on the opposite side? Let's say you want page 1 over here, and page 2 over here,
page 3 here, and page 4. So, right, left, right, left like that. In that case, I would
rearrange your artboards to be two columns. So, we'll go ahead and do that. I undid
all the way back to where I have the little codes again. And this time, we're
going to come up to my Artboards panel. I'm going to choose the three lines, "Rearrange
All Artboards", and then I want to make sure my layers are unlocked. I'll choose this first
option, "Grid by Row". I want two columns, and I want to move the artwork with the artboard.
And we'll say, OK. Ok, so this kind of gives us the layout that we want. We're going to put a
page number here and then a page number here. I'm going to click on my text frame, and then
I'm going to choose align left for the paragraph. Then I'll move it right over here. And so, this
is what I want for all the ones on the left side. Now, I want to make a copy of this, so
I'll Click it and hit Command + C (or Control + C for PC). And now I'll run the script
(File > Scripts > Page Indexer). And now it's put all the page numbers on the left side.
I'm going to zoom out with Command + minus (or Control + minus) and I'm going to lock that
lower layer. And I'll select everything on the right side and just delete it. Then, I'll make
a new layer. I'm also going to lock Layer 2. And then on Layer 3, I'll paste in front with
Command + F (or Control + F). This will put it exactly where it was before, except this time
I'm going to do Align Right, and I'll pull this over so it's about the same distance from
the edge. And then we'll run the script again. So now it's run, and it's put a page
number on the right side. Now we can just select all these on the left and delete
those. So it's a little bit of a process, but this is how you can get your page
numbers on alternating sides of the page. Scenario: Fix page numbers not showing up on
some pages. Now let's say some pages have a dark background and your page number isn't showing
up because it's also dark. So, I've opened a new document where this problem could happen. Let's
say you have a photo or something here. This time, I'll make a white version of the page number. But
first, I'm going to save a copy of the document, so I'll hit Shift + Command + S
(or Shift + Control + S on a PC), and I'm going to call this "Page Numbers White".
I'm going to highlight my text with the text tool, and then I'll come up here to Color
and just choose white right here. Now, you'll notice I already have the "Page Nr" because
this is copied in here. Now, when you do this, you'll want to make sure that it's on a new
layer. So, I'll go ahead and create one. I'll click on my text box, and then I'll pull
this little blue dot up onto the upper layer. Then we'll go ahead and run the script. So, these two pages, page seven and eight, have
white page numbers. I'm going to go ahead and select these. You'll notice this artboard
is selected, page seven. So just notice which is selected. I'll copy them, and I'm
going to open up that original file with the dark background. I'll make sure to click
on this artboard. I'll make a new layer, and then I'll paste in front with
Command + F (or Control + F for PC), and it’ll put those in exactly the right spot.
Now, I need all the rest of the page numbers. So, I'm going to click on this. I'm going to
make a new layer, and I'll just drag that one to the new layer. Then, I'll lock the two
layers I'm not using, and I'll run the script. Okay, now this is fine, except it also
put them on page seven and eight. We just can't see them very well. So, I've selected
both of those, and I'm just going to delete. And that leaves our white page numbers
here, and they're on this other layer. So, those are all the situations that I could
come up with. If you have another scenario or you're not able to get this to work, please
leave a comment in the comment section. And if the video helped you, that is also great to
hear. So please leave a comment in that case too. Alright, I hope you liked this video. If you
did and you want to see more videos like this, you can just hit the Subscribe button and the
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I'll see you in the next video. Thank you!!
