Sometimes we are left with temporary objects that flow over the pasteboard. Part of these objects that still intersects the white area remains visible, but InDesign refuses to show us what happens beyond.

Of course you can select the frames and contemplate their bounding boxes:

OK, we can select and see bounding boxes beyond the pasteboard…

but it remains impossible to guess what they contain.

An obvious solution is to globally increase the visible margins of the pasteboard via Preferences > Guides & Pasteboard > Pasteboard Options. Not really inventive!

InDesign CS5 (and later) offers a much more fun trick. As soon as we set some guides beyond the current bounds—which is only possible with the power of scripting—InDesign accordingly expands the viewport:

Expanded pasteboard.

This gave me the idea of writing a simple “PasteboardExpander”, which automatically fits the active spread with respect to any ‘extra’ content. Here is the snippet that makes the magic happen:

// InDesign CS5/CS5.5/CS6
// =====================================
(function(s,a,m,f,i,x)
{
    (s=s[a][f+'Window'])&&
    (s=s[a][f+'Spread'])&&
    (
        // Prevent 'locked guides' issues!
        // ---
        app.documents[x]().preferences[x]().
            properties={guidesLocked:false},
 
        // Retrieve the page bounds
        // ---
        a=s.pages[x]().bounds,
 
        // Min-max algo on page bounds
        // ---
        m=[m,m,-m,-m],
        (f=function(v,t)
        {
            while(t=a.pop(i=4))
            while(i--)
            (t[i]<m[i])^(i>>1)&&(m[i]=t[i],m[~i]=v)
        })(),
 
        // Min-max algo on page items bounds
        // ---
        a=s.pageItems[x]().visibleBounds,f(1)
    )
 
    // OK, create the guides where needed
    // ---
    while(i--)m[~i]&&
    s.guides.add({location:m[i],
        orientation:1&i?1986359924:1752134266})
 
})(app,'properties',1/0,'active',0,'everyItem');
 
 

Have fun!