The Articles Panel is a new feature in InDesign CS5.5 that controls the order in which content is exported to EPUB. Content objects are added to the Articles Panel either by dragging and dropping them individually or in selected groups, or by holding Ctrl/Cmd and selecting the + icon to add all objects in the document at once.

Note: The Articles Panel is only useful as a post-production step for fully composed documents that are ready for manual export to EPUB. Users of Typefi Publish are able to control content order and EPUB export within a fully automated process (see EPUB format made easy with Typefi Publish and InDesign CS5.5). The below information is provided to assist new customers with legacy content.

Objects and articles

An object is any frame: a text frame, a graphics frame, an image frame. Objects can be styled through object styles, and only objects can be added to the articles panel. Linked story frames (or the main text frame in a Typefi template) comprise one object, so placing any frame will add the entire story to the panel. But be careful — objects that are not inline within a story can only be placed before or after the entire story. If you want an image to sit within your story then it will need to be converted to an inline image and positioned in the frame, or placed as an anchored object in the story, before you place the story frame onto the Articles panel.

Within the Articles panel, objects are arranged in articles. An article can contain as many objects as you need, from just one to all of them.

Using the Articles Panel

Selecting an object on the Articles Panel takes you to that object. Even if you’re not exporting to EPUB, adding all your content to the Articles Panel provides an easy way to navigate within your document.

When you add an article to the panel, it is by default selected for export to EPUB. De-selecting the article means that it won’t export. You can only de-select by article, not by individual object, so if you want only one of the objects to be de-selected within an article, that object needs to be moved to its own article.

You may have several objects that you don’t want to export to EPUB. Common examples would include headers, footers and page numbers, none of which are relevant to EPUBs. Other examples might include images for which you hold only print rights, not digital rights, or visual background items. Rather than de-selecting these objects one by one, create a new article called 'non-export', and add all your non-exporting objects to this article. Then you can just de-select this article, and be confident none of those objects will export to EPUB.

There are other ways to control content export: see Non-printing content and conditional text.