InDesign's Secret Jump to Master Page Command

Have you ever wished you could jump to a mas­ter page in InDesign with­out hav­ing to use the mouse (or track­pad) and the Pages panel?

Some peo­ple will answer that ques­tion with: No. It’s easy enough to double-click the mas­ter page icon on the Pages panel.

Others will hear that ques­tion and respond: Oh, yes! Anything to save a few sec­onds or hav­ing to grab the mouse.

Many of us work with mul­ti­ple mas­ter pages in our InDesign doc­u­ments. As you can see in Figure 1 below, a par­tial screen­shot of the Pages pan­el from a pub­li­ca­tion I’m work­ing on, mas­ter pages can add up, con­sum­ing space at the top of the Pages pan­el. Note the scroll­bar; this par­tic­u­lar doc­u­ment has 48 mas­ter pages. Some of the pub­li­ca­tions I build for this client require even more.

Multiple master pages can take up a lot of space on the Pages panel.
Figure 1: Multiple mas­ter pages can take up a lot of space on the Pages panel.

After a hand­ful of mas­ter pages, you need to scroll through their sec­tion of the Pages pan­el to find the right one, then double-click it to get to edit­ing that mas­ter page. I’ve dis­cov­ered a lit­tle tip to make access­ing mas­ter pages almost instantaneous–without drag­ging the mouse any­where near the Pages panel.

In InDesign press CMD+J (macOS) or CTRL+J (Windows) to open the Go to Page dia­log (see Figure 2).

The Go to Page dialog in InDesign.
Figure 2: The Go to Page dia­log in InDesign.

Now type the pre­fix for the mas­ter page you want to edit. If that’s the default mas­ter page, just type a. You could also type b, c, 3col, 2A, COV, or what­ev­er 1–4 alphanu­mer­ic code you’ve used in the Master Options Prefix field (see Figure 3). It does­n’t have to even be the entire pre­fix; it just needs to be enough of the pre­fix that InDesign knows you don’t mean any oth­er mas­ter page or a stan­dard page num­ber (see Figure 4). Finish enter­ing part or all of the pre­fix and then press Return/Enter to jump direct­ly instant­ly to the mas­ter page.

Figure 3: The prefix given to a master page in the page's Master Options is the key to jumping to the master page from the keyboard.
Figure 3: The pre­fix giv­en to a mas­ter page in the page’s Master Options is the key to jump­ing to the mas­ter page from the keyboard.
Figure 4: Enter part or all of the master page prefix to jump to that master page.
Figure 4: Enter part or all of the mas­ter page pre­fix to jump to that mas­ter page.

To recap, jump from any­where in the InDesign doc­u­ment direct­ly to any mas­ter page as eas­i­ly as 1–2‑3:

  1. Press CMD+J/CTRL+J.
  2. Type part or all of the pre­fix of the mas­ter page.
  3. Press Return/Enter.