You generated more puzzles than you want in the bound book. Maybe you made fifty word searches for choice, but the paperback should hold thirty. Maybe one grid in the batch printed too small and you want a replacement without rerunning Time Saver. Maybe you are carving a themed printable pack out of a larger KDP interior.

Puzzle Book Studio solves that with two non-destructive switches: Hide in puzzle book and Limit puzzle count. They change what assembles into the interior. They do not delete puzzles from your project, and they do not force you to regenerate batches you already paid time to build.

This guide explains what each control does for a buyer-facing book or pack, where to find it in Studio, how Rebuild Book applies the change, and two worked examples with real page math. Every control name below matches the labels on the Puzzle Set Properties and Puzzle Properties panels in Puzzle Book Studio.

What hide and limit change in the finished book

When you click Create on the main window, Puzzle Maker Pro writes puzzle images and builds a book layout. Studio opens that layout as pages you can inspect. Every puzzle and every puzzle set (the software calls a generated batch a puzzle set, backed by one collection in the project) carries two assembly flags:

Control	Where you set it	What the buyer sees	What stays in your project
Hide in puzzle book	Puzzle Set Properties or Puzzle Properties	The set or puzzle is omitted from the interior, including its solution pages	The puzzles remain in the project file; you can unhide later
Limit puzzle count	Puzzle Set Properties only	Only the first n visible puzzles from that set print, in generation order (shuffle runs afterward)	The rest stay in the set for a longer edition or a future render

Hiding is precise. Limiting is a cap from the top of the list. They stack: hidden puzzles are removed before the limit runs, and the limit never drops below two puzzles on a set that still has more than two visible puzzles.

Neither control edits the puzzle image itself. If the grid is wrong, hide that puzzle and generate a replacement, or fix the source in the module Creator and rebuild the book.

Who needs Puzzle Book Studio for this

Hide and Limit puzzle count live in Puzzle Book Studio, not in the one-click Instant Puzzle Books path. Instant Puzzle Books is the right tool when every generated puzzle should print and the layout comes straight from Settings → Instant Puzzle Books. When you need to drop pages or shorten a set without regenerating, open Studio.

Edition gates matter for multi-set books:

• Puzzle Book Studio Creative (and Creative + Interactive when you also host web play) covers one puzzle collection with full layout editing.
• Puzzle Book Studio Productivity (and Productivity + Interactive) is required when the same .pmpbook holds several puzzle sets — for example easy, medium, and hard sudoku bands in one spine.

Instant Puzzle Books ships with every edition. Studio starts at Creative. The editions page lists what your licence includes.

Step 1 — Open the book and pick a tree

After generation, click Open Studio on the main window, or tick Open After Create so Studio launches when the batch finishes.

The left side has two linked trees:

• Book Structure shows pages in reading order.
• Puzzle Sets shows each collection and its puzzles.

Select a puzzle set name to open Puzzle Set Properties on the right. Expand the set and select one puzzle to open Puzzle Properties. The preview in the centre updates when you select a page or puzzle.

If you are new to the window layout, read How to Use Puzzle Book Studio in Puzzle Maker Pro for the three-pane workspace and preview modes (1 Page, 2 Pages, Spread).

Step 2 — Hide an entire puzzle set

Use this when a whole batch should stay in the project but not in this book. Common cases:

• You generated both easy and hard bands, but this listing is the easy volume only.
• You imported a seasonal set for next year’s edition.
• You are testing layout on one module while another set stays loaded for later.

To hide a set:

1. In Puzzle Sets, click the set name.
2. On Puzzle Set Properties, tick Hide in puzzle book.

The set’s puzzles and their solutions disappear from the assembly. The puzzles are not deleted. Clear the checkbox to bring them back.

While a set is hidden, Add page on that set is disabled, because a new text page would have nowhere to print. Unhide first if you need to attach pages to that set.

Step 3 — Hide individual puzzles

Use this when one page fails quality control, duplicates another, or should sit out of this edition only.

1. Expand the set in Puzzle Sets.
2. Click the puzzle row (or click the puzzle slot in the preview).
3. On Puzzle Properties → Settings, tick Hide in puzzle book.

Hide a puzzle and its matching solution leaves together. They share one record in the book engine, so you cannot accidentally ship a key without its puzzle or the reverse.

You can still edit Title and Description on visible puzzles; those fields commit when you leave the box and update the preview titles immediately.

Step 4 — Limit how many puzzles print from a set

Limit puzzle count is faster than hiding dozens of rows when you simply want a shorter run from the front of a long batch.

1. Select the puzzle set.
2. Tick Limit puzzle count.
3. Set the number in the spinner beside the checkbox.

Rules from the product behaviour:

• Per-puzzle hides are applied first. The limit then keeps the first n visible puzzles in the set’s generation order (the order they appear in the Puzzle Sets list before shuffling).
• The spinner never goes below 2. Its maximum is one less than the set’s total puzzle count, including hidden rows. At assembly time the book keeps the first n visible puzzles in generation order, where n is the smaller of the number you typed and one less than the visible puzzle count (and at least 2 when limiting applies). If you type 49 on a set that only has 47 visible puzzles, the interior gets 46 puzzles, not 49.
• If the set has two or fewer visible puzzles, limiting does nothing — there is nothing meaningful to trim.

Shuffle and limit together. Within Sets or Entire Book shuffles after the limit chooses its subset. Shuffling changes the reading order of the puzzles that survived the cap; it does not change which puzzles were selected. The cap always uses generation order first, whether or not you shuffle afterward.

Limiting does not let you cherry-pick puzzles from the middle of a list. Hide the ones you do not want, then limit the front of what remains.

Step 5 — Rebuild, preview, and render

Hide and limit flags do not change the PDF on disk until the book reassembles.

1. Click Rebuild Book on the toolstrip (or change a layout setting that triggers a rebuild).
2. Walk the preview from page 1. Confirm puzzle count, section order, and that no hidden puzzle reappeared.
3. Check Warnings for word lists that overflow or puzzles that still need human editing. The Warnings in Puzzle Book Studio article explains each flag.
4. When the interior matches what you will sell, click Render Book and choose your output formats.

Studio rebuilds about a second after many edits, but toggling hide or limit still needs a rebuild pass so page numbers, the table of contents, and solution cross-references stay truthful. After a big trim, re-read the how-it-works page and the contents lines that mention puzzle counts or solution start pages.

For layout changes beyond selection — margins, grids per page, collation — see How to Change Page Layouts and Rebuild Puzzle Books. For export formats, see How to Render Puzzle Books in Multiple Formats.

Worked example 1 — Trim a 50-puzzle KDP book to 30 pages of play

Situation. You generated fifty 15×15 word searches for an 8.5×11 paperback. You are aiming for about 70 interior pages including front matter and a collated answer key — your own target for printing cost and thickness, not a fixed platform rule.

Layout assumptions. One puzzle per page, Puzzles First, Then Solutions, title page and table of contents on (four front-matter pages total), one solution per puzzle page at the back.

Math without trimming.

• 50 puzzle pages + 50 solution pages + 4 front matter = 104 pages.

What you do in Studio.

1. Open the word search set in Puzzle Sets.
2. Tick Limit puzzle count and set 30 (valid because 30 is between 2 and 49).
3. Rebuild Book and confirm the preview ends at puzzle 30 before the solutions section.
4. Update the how-it-works sentence to say “30 puzzles” and check the contents line for the solution section start page.

Math after limiting.

• 30 puzzle pages + 30 solution pages + 4 front matter = 64 pages.

Recommendation. Use Limit puzzle count here. You keep twenty spare grids in the project for a sequel or a Teachers Pay Teachers add-on without regenerating. If three puzzles inside the first thirty are weak, hide those three and leave the limit at 30. The book fills the thirty slots from the next visible puzzles in the set instead of the ones you hid.

Worked example 2 — Swap one bad maze without regenerating forty others

Situation. You built a 40-puzzle maze book in Studio Productivity with two sets: twenty “Forest” mazes and twenty “Ocean” mazes. Puzzle 7 in Forest has a routing error you only notice at preview size.

Goal. Ship nineteen Forest mazes and twenty Ocean mazes in the KDP file (thirty-nine puzzles total), and park the bad Forest maze for a fix later.

What you do.

1. Select Forest puzzle 7 in Puzzle Sets.
2. Tick Hide in puzzle book on Puzzle Properties.
3. Rebuild Book and verify the forest section runs nineteen puzzles with matching solutions.
4. Leave the Ocean set untouched.

Math (one puzzle per page, solutions collated at the back, six front-matter pages including a short how-to-play page per set).

• Before: 40 puzzle pages + 40 solution pages + 6 front matter = 86 pages.
• After: 39 puzzle pages + 39 solution pages + 6 front matter = 84 pages.

Recommendation. Use Hide in puzzle book for the single bad maze. Limit puzzle count applies only to the set you select and always keeps puzzles from the front of that set’s generation-order list — it cannot skip to puzzle 7 while leaving puzzles 1–6 in place. That is why hide is the right tool for one bad page in the middle of a run. Generate a replacement maze in the module, add it to the forest set in a later session, unhide or delete the old row, and rebuild.

Save the project (Save Project → .pmpbook) before large trims so you can restore the full fifty-puzzle master and branch editions for Etsy packs. The turn a KDP book into Etsy printables guide uses the same hide tools for a smaller ZIP slice.

Save projects so trims are reversible

Save Project writes the hide flags, limits, titles, and layout into a .pmpbook file. Restore Project loads it later. That is how you keep a “full master” and a “store edition” without maintaining two separate generation folders.

Hiding is safer than deleting puzzle files from disk. A hidden puzzle can return with one checkbox. Deleting assets from the session folder breaks restore paths and triggers validation warnings on load.

Common mistakes

Forgetting to rebuild. The preview may look updated for titles, but page counts and contents lines stay stale until Rebuild Book runs.

Limiting a two-puzzle set. The control disables when there is nothing to trim. Hide one puzzle instead.

Expecting limit to pick puzzles 10–20. Only the first n visible puzzles in generation order count. Hide puzzles 1–9, or hide the ones you do not want and let later puzzles slide into a capped run.

Hiding a set but leaving its how-to-play page visible. How-to-play pages belong to the puzzle type; they still print once per book. If the entire module section should vanish, hide the set and confirm the preview no longer lists those puzzle pages.

Shipping the wrong edition for multiple sets. A book with four collections needs Puzzle Book Studio Productivity. Creative can hide and limit inside the one collection it can open.

Related guides

If your trim is really a channel split — paperback plus a smaller PDF — read Turn a KDP Puzzle Book into Etsy Printables for pack sizing and front matter to turn off. For choosing between the fast builder and Studio up front, compare Instant Puzzle Books with the Puzzle Book Studio tutorials hub. For a deeper Studio walkthrough, start with How to Use Puzzle Book Studio in Puzzle Maker Pro.

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