How to add a page in the middle of a digital notebook

It happens to almost everyone: the lecture ran long, the professor added one more slide, and suddenly the page you started is too small. On paper the fix is simple, you grab a new sheet and wedge it between two pages. On a tablet it sounds just as simple, a few taps and done.

But the real question is how you actually add a page inside a notebook that already has a linked index and navigation buttons on every page. In a notebook like that, the first tap does not solve everything on its own, and it is worth understanding what happens to the links before you go further.

In an app where a page can simply grow downward, this question barely comes up. In an app with fixed pages, it comes up every semester.

The technical answer is easy. What happens around it is not.

How to add a page, in practice

Open the page thumbnail view, long press the page you want to duplicate, and choose duplicate page from the menu. The new page lands right after the original, with the exact same background: the same lines, the same spacing.

That is the right move, not adding a blank page from the general menu. A blank page arrives with the app’s default paper, not the background of the template you have been writing on.

What happens to the next and previous buttons

Every lesson page carries a button to the next page and the previous one, in the direction of a Hebrew book. Those buttons were built into the file in advance, so when you insert a new page in the middle, the two old pages keep pointing at each other, not at the new page.

The new page does not help either. It arrives with the same buttons as the page it was copied from, so it points to the same place as the original, not forward to whatever now actually follows it.

What happens to the index

The hundred index rows are already linked to specific pages from the moment the file was built. A page inserted in the middle does not get a row of its own, so there is no direct way to it from the index, only through the page before it in ordinary scrolling.

That is not a bug. It just means inserting a page in the middle is the least convenient way to solve the problem, even if it is the first one that comes to mind.

The simple fix, one more index row instead of one more page

Most of the time there is a much easier answer. A hundred index rows is far more than one course needs in one semester, so there are almost always free rows further down the file.

Instead of fighting to wedge a page into the middle, continue the lesson on the next free row: write “continued from lesson 12” there, and fill in the rest of the notes. Navigating through the index does not depend on the next and previous buttons at all, so this works cleanly and does not break a single existing link.

And if you really need a page in that exact spot

Sometimes you really do want the content to sit right next to the original page, say a diagram that continues a sentence already started. In that case, duplicate the page as above, and accept that the new page is not wired into the next and previous chain.

Solve that with one line in the corner of the original page: “more on the next page.” Just like flipping freely through paper, a finger knows to keep going one page forward, even without a button pointing there.

How to avoid this next semester

The best fix is a template that already gives each lesson enough room from the start. A Hebrew digital school notebook is built for exactly this: a linked index with a hundred rows, one row per lesson, and a hundred lined lesson pages running the full width of the page, with index, next and previous navigation on every page.

That is more lessons than a normal single course fills in a semester, so in practice the rows almost never run out. And if one course really does outgrow it, just duplicate the whole file again for that same subject and start part two, instead of fighting to wedge one page into the middle.

The same file, remember, also covers every other subject: duplicate it once per course, and there is always a spare notebook sitting ready without buying again. Five color themes are included, and it works in Goodnotes, Notability, Noteshelf, and any PDF annotation app with a stylus.