ok - before I edit all 15 pages - is there a better way?

[Acorn]

Exactly the same but a few steps less.
You've already stopped repeating one footer, so select the footer on a different page:
Delete group. Choose to delete from ALL pages.
Go back to the page with the ungrouped footer. Marquee select all footer items > repeat on all pages.

Exactly my approach. I have been doing this for Repeating Groups top and bottom of a 100-page site but i had to get everything just right so I also did Egg's way as a fall-back.

Instead of Grouping, I automatically use Soft-Group and to be really safe add the content into a separate Layer.
You do need a different strategy if rollovers are involved.

Acorn

[TheeeDragon]

1. understand all the replies = TY
2. so this is why SOFT group is better than Group = (still learning)
3. Acorn said different if rollover == well - they are LINKS to pages = is that same as rollover?
(my links have color change (I edited the default colors and added a bulge animation

[handrawn]

so this is why SOFT group is better than Group = (still learning)

the technical difference between an ordinary and a soft group is that orrdinary groups will reorder the postion of the objects in the stack [that is they will be moved so they are all together, one on top of each other, with nothing else in between], but soft groups do not, they leave the stack order unchanged, and that also means you can group across layers which ordinary groups cannot

[Egg Bramhill]

And even more importantly for websites if you group an object (even a single object) it is exported as a bitmap. This isn't a good idea unless you want it to be a bitmap. Softgroups export as text and shapes whenever possible.

[Acorn]

And even more importantly for websites if you group an object (even a single object) it is exported as a bitmap. This isn't a good idea unless you want it to be a bitmap. Softgroups export as text and shapes whenever possible.

Soft-groups will always render text as text until you rotate it.
For a Group, you can still get text rendering but you have to add the special Name, htmltext.

Acorn

[Egg Bramhill]

Of course you are correct. I only wish my brain could remember all these nuggets

[TheeeDragon]

ok - here is what I did, combining from above ideas
as the bottom title bar on page 1 had links
and was already UNGROUPED
(black rectangle and text box with a different word for each word a link to a different page)

1. copied the black box and text box
2. I made new page (in same document)
3. Dropped in a copy of the black box and text box from page one
4. Went to the new page 3, which was the old page 2
5. Selected still grouped title bar at the bottom
6. delete all
7. Made sure it did not delete the spare on the new page 2, yes it was still there, but I did not need it
8. Went back to page one and made a soft group
9. I said repeat all pages
10. Deleted the spare page 2

Did a local publish and Link still work
Whole thing took under 60 Seconds
You guys are great, thank you

[Egg Bramhill]