Tag: InDesign

Watched Diving Deep into Adobe InDesign from Adobe

Learn how to be more efficient working with InDesign layouts, and discover how to speed up your workflow by mastering the features you use every day.

Woo! InDesign advanced tips! I’ve avoided learning GREP because it seems complicated and wasn’t sure exactly what all it could do, but this had some interesting use cases and good instructions.

Importing from Word

Resave word doc file extension as .zip file, then use a program to unzip it and it will extract the original media files in their unedited format.

Import Word > reserve local overrides to preserve bold, italics, etc.

Find/Change with GREP

• Figure out what is unique about imported style
• Match “positive lookbehind” to add circumstance if your text is always after a specific type of formatting (e.g. two hard returns)
• Icons under Search – far right icon lets you select a style to search within – useful to remove excess numbering 😃
• Bottom box lets you use search to apply formatting
• Preformatted multiple return to single return deletes extra spacing

GREP Styles

GREP style = dynamic reference to a character style

Paragraph Style > GREP style > new GREP style > select character style > write expression or exact word

To define a set of multiple words to apply formatting to: (WORD|WORD|WORD)

(Can also be accomplished with nested styles)

GREP formatting

• . = any character
• ^ = beginning of the paragraph
• + = may be more than one
• \. = period
• use a space for a space
• | = or
• () = defines a set
• \d = any digit
• {#,} = at least as many as this number, i.e. .{20,} would look for a series of at least 20 characters

More GREP resources:

• Erica Gamet’s GREP cheat sheet
• Recommended GREP resources from Creative PRO
• Book: GREP in InDesign 3

Conditional Text

Hide specific pieces of text with conditional text: select text, include final return of paragraph, check the conditional text style, click the eye symbol to make it not visible

Responsive style – use GREP – can apply formatting based on conditions, e.g. reduce font size based on character length

Track Changes

• Window > Editorial > Track Changes (must be set up as a user first)
• File > User – set yourself up as a user
• Click in text frame, then click “power” to track changes in that frame (can also select “enable track changes in all frames”)

See track changes: Edit > Edit in Story Editor (ctrl-y)

Then can accept or reject changes from Track Changes window

Edit > Preferences > Track Changes – choose colors for track changes

Can also use menu to accept / reject all changes by a specific user

Tables

Importing from Excel

• Select area you want to import, right click and select “define name”
• Save file as .xls
• When importing check “show import options” – change cell range to the named selection

Formatting Tables

Tip: create a “clean cell” style that clears borders and styles

(Nice, I already know most of this stuff 💪 Have done a lot of table formatting in my day 😄)

Click table frame then hold shift to expand evenly – also works for cells to move cell divisions without sliding over all other cells!

To insert picture, convert to Graphic Cell, select cells and adjust formatting with Object > Frame Fitting Options > fit content proportionally from the center, then can increase inset to make images fit without touching

Quickly Transforming and Matching Images

Adjust eyedropper options to only select certain styles, such as object size

Select multiple images and adjust placement in frame: select all frames, Object > Select > Content, use arrow keys to move all

To redefine size of multiple objects at once: first change one, select others and Object > Transform sequence again individually

Other Notes

Paragraph Style Bullets and Numbering > create new list style to ensure numbering associated with that style

Window > Interactive > Hyperlinks > Convert URLs to hyperlinks > can apply style at same time

Ha! He adds emojis to the names of paragraph styles to make them stand out

Object > Convert Shape