We regularly update this compilation of the Tip-of-the-Week mailings from InDesign Magazine.

Find Patterns You Can Automate
To be efficient in InDesign, automate the repeating elements in your documents. For example, the Text Variables feature (new in CS3) is ideal for handling repeating elements, such as variable running heads in a book or catalog, or the current date.

You can find a list of premade text variables in the Type > Text Variables > Insert Variable submenu. If you don’t see any, your document was probably created in CS2 or earlier. You can load text variables from another InDesign document (such as one created in CS3) by choosing Type > Text Variables > Define, then clicking Load.

-- David Blatner
Editorial Director, InDesign Magazine; co-host, InDesignSecrets.com

Open A Window For A Fresh Look At Type
You’re laying out text, experimenting with different faces, colors, and styles. But when you select the text to change it, the colors invert, so it's hard to tell what your changes look like.

To fix this, choose Window > Arrange > New Window. Nothing will be selected in the new window, so you can use it to preview all the changes you make to your type in the original window.

Note that this trick works for type on a path and tables, too.

-- Mike Rankin, InDesign Magazine author, trainer, and blogger

Master Items and Books
Say you have several documents in a book, each of which ends on a right-hand (odd) page, and you want each following document in the book to start on a right-hand page.

In InDesign CS3, choose Book Page Numbering Options from the Book panel menu, then choose “Continue on next odd page” from the Page Order options. Click Insert Blank Page to automatically add a left-hand page to any document in the book that ends on an odd page.

However, the inserted pages are always based on no master page. To give those blank pages master page information, you have to manually drag a master onto them.

-- Sandee Cohen Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine; Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

Show Guides at Certain Zooms Only
When you zoom out on your InDesign document, do all those guides clutter up your screen? Sure, you can hide the guides or turn off the layer showing the guide or change the view options for the guides on a layer. But here's a better technique. Before you start dragging guides out, go to Layout > Ruler Guides, and change the View Threshold from 5% to something higher, like 101%. From that point on, any guide you create will only be visible when you are zoomed in to 101% or higher. This means that guides that you need for close up work are visible when you're zoomed in, but they're not visible when you zoom out to see the entire page.

-- Sandee Cohen Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine; Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

Unlink Text Boxes Without Disturbing Their Contents
You can unlink text boxes without disturbing the boxes' contents by running one simple script that you already have.

In InDesign CS3, open your Scripts panel (Window> Automation> Scripts) and look in the Application folder, then the JavaScript folder. You'll see a script called SplitStory. Place your cursor in one frame of the story and double-click the script name in the panel. InDesign will split all the frames of the story into individual frames.

-- Sandee Cohen Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine; Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

Make All Frames the Same Height or Width
So you have a whole bunch of frames on the page, and you want them all to be the same height (or width).

Select one of the frames and enter the correct height (or width) in the H (or W) field in the Control panel. Press Return.

Now, select all the other frames you need to fixe. Choose Object > Transform > Transform Again Individually.

Presto! All of the frames change their height (or width) to the previous amount.

-- Sandee Cohen Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine; Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

Keyboard Shortcut to Restore Default Workspace
Do you want to quickly restore your InDesign CS3 workspace to the default but don't know the keyboard shortcut for Window > Workspace > Default Workspace? Don't bother looking in the Keyboard Shortcuts list -- it's not there. But you can make your own shortcut.

Begin by going to Window > Workspace > Default Workspace. Select Window > Workspace > Save Workspace, and name the workspace something like Default Workspace. That places the saved workspace at the top of the saved workspaces.

Then go to Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts and click the New Set button to create your own custom set and name it anything you want. Choose Window menu under Product Area. Scroll down and find Workspace: Load 1st Workspace. Now assign a keyboard shortcut to that command. Be sure to click Assign before clicking OK.

Because the workspace is forced to the top of the list, you'll always have a keyboard shortcut for that workspace which is the default layout.

-- Sandee Cohen Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine; Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

Guides as Snippets
Way back in 2005, InDesign Magazineprinted this tip from Erica Gamet:

"You can save a page's guides by selecting them and choosing Add Item from the Library's palette menu or by clicking the New Item button at the bottom of the palette. Then, when you want to use the same set of guides on another page, simply select it in the Library and choose Place Item(s) in the palette menu. This places the same guides, in the same positions, on the new page. You can't add to or place guides from a Library using drag and drop."

But today, there's another way to work: Save your Guides as Snippets. Instead of adding them to a library, just select the guides and choose Export as InDesign Snippet. The Guides will be fully visible in Adobe Bridge, where they can be dragged onto new InDesign pages.

-- Sandee Cohen
Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine; Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

Rotation -- Clockwise or Counter-clockwise
Have you ever had that moment of doubt as to which direction InDesign's rotation angle is going to move your object? Are positive numbers clockwise or counter-clockwise?

I can't remember myself, but there's a little cheat that helps me look smart in front of a class. Just take a quick peek at the Rotation tool in the Tools panel. Notice that it indicates a counter-clockwise direction. That's your clue that positive numbers rotate objects counter-clockwise. Negative numbers go clockwise. This half-second glance saves me a lot of undos.

-- Sandee Cohen
Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine; Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

A Better Selection Tool
Have you ever wished the Direct Selection tool were a little less destructive? For instance, I like to be able to select the image within a frame, but I hate when the Direct Selection tool inadvertently moves a point in that frame. That means I have to press down on the Direct Selection tool slot in the Tools panel, then choose the Position tool. (To find the Position tool, use the keyboard shortcut Shift+A, or put your pointer over the Direct Selection tool in InDesign's toolbox and hold down your mouse button.)

Instead, think of the Position tool as the Direct Selection tool but without the ability to edit points and paths. Bonus: The Position tool still lets you change the dimensions of a frame. It's the best of the Selection and the Direct Selection tools!

-- Sandee Cohen
Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine; Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

Houdini Hidden Panels
Presenting, for your entertainment and enjoyment, the amazing "Houdini Hidden Panels."

You may know that pressing the Tab key or the Shift-Tab key will hide all of InDesign's onscreen panels. And pressing Tab or Shift-Tab will bring them back.

But here's the trick worthy of the great Houdini! With the panels hidden, bring your mouse over the area where the panels were originally hidden. Pause for a second.

The hidden panels automatically pop into view!

You can then choose a tool or use the panel commands. Then when you move the mouse away, the panels disappear.

-- Sandee Cohen
Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine; Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

Open Bridge with InDesign's Browse Command
You probably know that you can launch and navigate through Bridge by clicking the Bridge icon on the right side of InDesign's Control panel. But you don't have to click on that icon to open Bridge. The File > Browse command (Cmnd-Opt-O/Ctrl-Alt-O) also opens Bridge with a single keystroke -- no mousing required!

-- Sandee Cohen
Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine; Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

Make the Default Display High Quality
There are some documents, especially those with placed Adobe Illustrator files, that I want to always open at High-Quality Display. But even when I switch the file to View > Display > High-Quality Display and save the file, the file reopens with the Typical Display.

That's because the control for the view for a document isn't the view at which the document was last saved. You need to go to Preferences > Display Performance and change the Default View to High-Quality to make sure the document always opens in that display setting.

-- Sandee Cohen Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine; Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

Unlock the Mystery of Locked Guides
Say you're pulling guides down onto the page. Oops, you didn't get one of them just yet. You try to select and move the misplaced guide. No luck! You can't select any of the guides, much less unlock them. You check whether the Lock Guides command (View > Grids and Guides > Lock Guides is active, but it's not chosen.

Here's the secret: There are TWO commands for Lock Guides. The second is in the Layer options (Layer panel menu > Layer Options for ).

Amazingly, when the guides are locked through the Layers panel, the View menu may not reflect that lock.

-- Sandee Cohen Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine; Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

Place Images Like CS3 or CS3
As you may know, InDesign CS3 has a terrific feature that lets you load a cursor with multiple images from the Bridge, Finder, or Windows Explorer by dragging multiple files into an InDesign document window. Once you drag, you can click to place each image individually.

But what if you want to go back to CS2 behavior and place all of the files at once? Simple! Once you drag onto the page, hold the Cmd/Ctrl-Shift key. You'll see a multiple image icon that consists of three "pages" and a small rounded triangle. Click the icon to place all the images in the loaded cursor.

-- Sandee Cohen Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine; Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

Using SWF files in PDF files?
For a while now, Macintosh users have been frustrated by the inability to import SWF files into InDesign and PDF files. This inability wasn't due to Adobe products' limitations, but to Apple QuickTime. Fortunately, the newly released Acrobat 9 fixes that problem. Mac users can once again import SWF movies into their PDF files.

-- Sandee Cohen Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine; Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

Protect Master Page Items
A feature that debuted in InDesign CS3 lets you make a master page object impervious to being overridden on the document pages.

Select the object on the master page and turn off the toggle command "Allow Master Item Overrides on Selection" from the Pages panel menu.

This command makes it possible to "protect" items you never want overridden on the document page. For instance, you might not want automatic page numbers to be moved or modified.

This tip was inspired by a post by Robert Levine in the Adobe InDesign User to User forum.

-- Sandee Cohen Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine; Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

Scaling without Grouping
In previous tips, we've told you that you can scale grouped text and images together by holding the Cmd/Ctrl+Shift key and then dragging. But grouping can be awkward, as objects all move to the same layer.

Fortunately, you can resize multiple objects without grouping them. Select all the objects and switch to the Free Transform tool in InDesign's toolbar. Then simply drag on a corner of the selection and hold the Shift key to constrain the proportions.

Your objects scale together without being grouped.

-- Sandee Cohen Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine; Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

Make a Smoother Text Wrap
Let's say you're trying to wrap text around something. You open the Text Wrap panel (Window > Text Wrap), select Show Options by clicking the tiny triangle on the panel's right side, and choose Detect Edges, Alpha Channel, or Photoshop Path in the Contour Options dropdown menu.That usually works well, but occasionally it produces a text wrap path with more points than is convenient. If so, use the Pen tool to make a path with no fillor stroke that's a simpler version of the object you want to wrap around. Then you need only to select the simple path and choose Wrap Around Object Shape in the Text Wrap panel.

For more on InDesign text wraps, see "Take Control of Text Wrap" on CreativePro.com.

-- Sandee Cohen Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine; Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

What's a Slug?
Besides being a garden pest (or the slacker in the office), in InDesign the Slug area is an area that may or may not be set to print. You'll find the Slug area in the New Document dialog box (File > New) by clicking the More Options button. The Slug area is a handy place to stash information about the client, product, insertion date, and so on. You can choose whether to print the Slug by clicking Marks and Bleed and then checking the Include Slug Area checkbox in the Print dialog window.

-- Sandee Cohen Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine; Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

Learn a Foreign Language
Well, maybe not the whole language, but you can learn the names of the days of the week as well as the months of the year in French, German, Spanish, Estonian -- any of the languages built into InDesign.

Create a new Text Variable (Type > Text Variables > Define) and then click the New button. In the Type dropdown menu, choose one of the date options, such as Output Date or Modification Date. Then use the Date Format controls to insert the code for Day Name and Month Name. Save this new text variable with the name "Lingua."

Now that you've defined the variable Lingua, you can insert it into a text frame (Type > Text Variables > Insert Variable> Lingua). It should show up in English if that's the language for your text. Now the fun part: Select the variable and in the Control or Character panel, change the language from English to something else. Ta da (or voilà) -- the days and months change to the language you just selected. Note: Some languages, such as Russian, may not display the correct glyph characters.

-- Sandee Cohen Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine; Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

Clear a Page's Guides at Once
Want to clear out all the guides on a page fast? Press Cmd-Opt-G (Mac) or Control-Alt-G (Windows). This selects allthe guides on the spread. Tap the Delete key and they're gone!

-- Sandee Cohen
Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine; Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

Where Am I?
Have you ever opened an InDesign file (say, by using the app's File > Open Recent command) and then wonder where that file is located? There are several ways to find a file's path location, but some are platform-specific. Here's an OS breakdown.

Cmd-click the title bar (Mac only):
The easiest way to find the location of a file within InDesign is to hold the Command key and click the title bar for the document. The complete path will be displayed. But this path can't be selected.

Address bar for Windows Explorer (Windows XP and Vista):
You can also find the path within Windows Explorer by setting the option to open the Address bar and clicking the name of the file. Or you can find the path by right-mouse clicking a file in Explorer and choosing Properties.

And here's a related tip for Windows Vista users: To display the hidden pop-up context menu items, hold down the Shift key, then right click on the file or folder. You will see the Copy as Path command. Choose Copy as Path and then you can paste the full path to the file or folder.

Text Variable File Name (Mac and Windows):
Finally, you can define a text variable within InDesign for the File Name of a document. There is an option to display the full path of the file. Insert this text variable in the pasteboard or slug area of your document on the master page and you'll always have the file path staring right back atcha!

-- Sandee Cohen
Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine; Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

How Spaces at the Start or End of a Line of Text Affect Centering
Let's say you have a single line of text that you need to center in the frame. It's no problem to click the center alignment icon in the Paragraph panel. But what if that line of text has an extra space at the end of the paragraph? Do you have to delete the extra space at the end of the line? Does the extra space affect the position of the text?

Fortunately, the answer is "No." InDesign ignores an extra space at the end of a line when centering text. However, the opposite is not true. An extra space at the start of a paragraph will affect the position of a line when centering text.

-- Sandee Cohen
Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine; Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

Reposition as You Create Objects
So you're right in the middle of drawing a frame or a line and you realize that you need the object a little further up the page so you can get a better idea of how big it should be. There's no need to stop the drag and reposition -- just hold the spacebar and you can move the object anywhere you want. When you're satisfied with its position, release the spacebar (but not the mouse) and continue to draw. This tip also works while drawing in Photoshop or Illustrator!

-- Sandee Cohen
Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine; Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

A Quick Way to Load Scripts
Perhaps, like me, you can never remember the path to where InDesign scripts are stored. Fortunately, we don't have to.

Open InDesign and go to the Scripts panel (Window > Automation > Scripts). Right-mouse click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac) on any script in the panel and choose Reveal in Explorer (Windows) or Reveal in Finder (Mac). This opens the folder that holds the scripts. Now you can simply drop a script in the folder without navigating through a long path.

-- Sandee Cohen
Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine,
Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

Placing a Cascade of Images
If you've been reading these tips for a while, you know that you can select a whole bunch of images to load into the cursor, then use the up/down arrow keys to cycle through the images. But did you know that you in CS2 and CS3, can place all the graphics in a cascade (one slightly overlapping the other) on the page by holding Cmd-Shift (Mac) or Ctrl +Shift (Windows) and then clicking with the cursor? Try it!

-- Sandee Cohen
Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine,
Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

Customizing Text Wraps
Once you've applied a text wrap to an object (Window > Text Wrap), you can modify that wrap by choosing the Direct Selection tool (white arrow) and clicking on the wrap's nodes (anchor points). But to add new nodes to the text wrap, switch to the Pen tool.

Position the Pen cursor over a point you want to delete and you'll see a little minus sign (-) next to the cursor. Click to delete the point. Position the Pen cursor where you want to add a point and a plus sign (+) appears. Click and a point appears at that position. You can even reshape type of point using the Convert Direction Point Tool, which you can quickly access by holding the Option (Mac) or Alt (Windows) key.

Switch back to the Direct Selection tool to move the points.

-- Sandee Cohen
Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine
Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

The Numbered List Feature -- Not Just for Numbered Lists Anymore!
There's no need to limit InDesign's Numbered List feature to inserting numbers before text paragraphs. For example, perhaps you would like to have the word "TIP" followed by a colon in front of certain paragraphs. The easy way to do this is to define a numbered list by choosing a paragraph style and, in the Paragraph Styles panel, clicking on the flyout menu and mousing down to Paragraph Style Options. In the resulting Paragraph Style Options window, select the Bullets and Numbering option in the left-hand pane.

In the right-hand pane, set the List type as Numbers and leave the Format option set as None. But then, in the field for Number, enter the word TIP followed by the code for a tab (^t). You can even apply a character style to this non-numbered list.

There are two big benefits to this process:
1. You don't have to type the word TIP and insert a tab character.
2. If your client decides to change the word "TIP" to "NOTE", you simply change the style definition, and the word will change everywhere that style is applied.

-- Sandee Cohen
Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine,
Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

Fitting Text Frames to Content
The command Fit Frame to Content (Object > Fitting...) automatically expands or contracts a text frame to fit the text within. But you can also use some nifty double-clicks to accomplish even more. Double-click the control handle on the bottom of the frame to force that side to expand or contract to hold the text. Double-click the control handle on the right side of the frame to force that side to expand or contract to hold the text. And finally, double-click the control handle on the bottom right corner of the frame to force both the bottom and right sides to expand or contract to hold the text.

-- Sandee Cohen
Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine
Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

Close the Tabs Panel
In versions of InDesign before CS3, the same keyboard shortcut opened and closed the Tabs panel (Shift+Ctrl+T for Windows; Shift+Command+T for Macs).

In CS3, that keyboard shortcut only opens the Tabs panel. However, if your insertion point is blinking within the Tabs panel, you can press the Esc key to close the panel.

-- Sandee Cohen
Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine
Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

Reverse the Direction of an Arrow
When you add an arrowhead to an open path, the arrowhead appears at either the start of the path or the end. However, you might want to change the placement of the arrowhead from one end of the path to the other. The quickest way to do so is to choose Object > Paths > Reverse Path. That will change the start of the path to the end and the end to the start. You can also click the Reverse Path icon in the Pathfinder panel.

-- Sandee Cohen
Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine
Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

Lost Your Welcome Screen?
Remember the screen that welcomed you to InDesign when you first launched the program? If you're like most people, you clicked Don't Show Again at the bottom of the screen and forgot all about it. But it's not just for newbies. It includes a handy list of the recent items you've worked on, as well as links for support groups.

To bring it back, go to the Help menu and choose Welcome Screen. Uncheck don't show again, and you're set.

-- Sandee Cohen
Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine
Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

Select and Distribute Guides
Guides are objects, but they have a few special properties when it comes to selecting them. If guides are the only objects on a layer or document, hit Cmd/Ctrl-A to Select All the guides.

However, when there are any selectable objects (frames or rules) on the page or layer, Select All won't select the guides.

Once you have selected the horizontal or vertical guides for a page, you can use the Align panel's (Window > Object & Layout > Align) Distribute command to place the guides equally on a page.

-- Sandee Cohen
Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine
Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

Moving Gradients between Illustrator and InDesign
You may know that the Adobe Swatch Exchange format (ase) does not support transferring gradient swatches between InDesign and Illustrator. But does that mean that InDesign and Illustrator can't trade swatches? Not at all.

To get a gradient from Illustrator into InDesign, simply copy/paste or drag/drop an object that contains a gradient from Illustrator into InDesign. The gradient will automatically show up in the Swatches panel.

It's not quite as simple to get a gradient from InDesign into Illustrator. If you copy/paste or drag/drop an object from InDesign into Illustrator, the gradient will appear, but it won't be added to Illustrators Swatches panel. You'll need to ungroup and release a few clipping paths to coax the object to display the gradient in the Gradient panel.

You can add this unnamed gradient to the Swatches panel by first showing the options in the Gradient panel, then dragging the small gradient preview square from the Gradient panel into the Swatches panel. You now have a named gradient from InDesign in Illustrator's Swatches panel.

-- Sandee Cohen
Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine
Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

The Fifth Text Wrap Option
InDesign CS3 added tons of controls for all sorts of commands to the Control panel. This makes it easy to add text wraps to objects without going to the regular Text Wrap panel. Watch out, though.

There's an extra text wrap option that is only available in the regular Text Wrap panel, and not in text wrap options in the Control panel. The fifth text wrap option is Jump to Next Column (or frame or page). This command ensures that the text wrap object is the final object in the column.
But you'll never know the option is there if you look only at the Control panel for your text wrap commands.

-- Sandee Cohen
Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine
Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

Use the Script Label Panel for Notes
How do you add notes to others working on a document? If you're working within text frames, you've got the handy Note tool. But what if you want to make a comment about an image or other non-text element on a page? How can you give the next person who works on the file instructions about that object?

Here's how to do it in CS3: Select the image, then open the Script Label panel (Window > Automation > Script Label). Write anything you want in the area inside the panel -- there's room for hundreds of words.

Tell the next person working on the document to keep the Script Label panel open. When any object is selected, the note will appear in the panel.

-- Sandee Cohen
Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine
Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

Transparency Grid for InDesign
You may be familiar with the Transparency Grid in Photoshop or
Illustrator. This checkerboard pattern sits behind artwork to let you know which areas are transparent and which are filled with white or a color. InDesign doesn't have an actual Transparency Grid, but another feature can act as one.

Choose Preferences > Grids and make sure the Grids in Back option is checked. Click OK. Then choose View > Grids & Guides > Show Document Grid. If you see the Document Grid beneath something, that something is transparent.

-- Sandee Cohen
Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine
Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

Working with Layers
Have you ever had a long list of layers in the Layers panel and wanted to turn off the visibility for all except one? Instead of clicking madly up and down the list, hold the Option/Alt key and click on the layer you want to see. That layer will remain visible while the others are turned off. The same technique can be used to lock all the layers except the one you want to work on.

-- Sandee Cohen
Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine
Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

Dragging Effects from Object to Stroke to Fill
It's easy to forget to target just the stroke or fill when you apply an effect such as a drop shadow to an InDesign frame. But instead of deleting the effect and then reapplying it to the correct attribute, you can drag the little "fx" label in the Effects panel from Object to Stroke or Fill.

If you want to add the effect from the stroke to the fill, hold the Opt/Alt key as you drag. You'll keep the effect on the first attribute and duplicate the effect onto the second attribute.

-- Sandee Cohen
Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine
Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

More Detailed Previews in Bridge
You can preview InDesign documents in Bridge, but most of the text may be greeked; that is, appear only as gray lines. You can create a bigger preview, with more details, from within InDesign by going to Preferences > File Handling with no document open. Under the section for Saving InDesign Files, change the Preview Size to Extra Large 1024 x 1024. From that point on, each document you save will have a more detailed preview, and most text will be visible in Bridge.

-- Sandee Cohen
Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine
Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

Leading like Quark?
Unlike QuarkXPress, InDesign applies leading as a character attribute. This means that you can have a paragraph with one line at a certain leading and another with a different leading. One way prevent mis-matched leading is to make sure you select an entire paragraph before changing any leading.

If you'd prefer that InDesign's leading work more like QuarkXPress, go to Preferences > Type and set the Type Option for Apply Leading to Entire Paragraphs. Now when you change the leading in one line, the change applies to the entire paragraph.

Warning: Even after making the change in Preferences, it's still possible to create paragraphs with mis-matched leading: for example, when you copy text with different leading into another paragraph. So if you copy and paste text, your next step should be to select the entire paragraph and set the leading.

-- Sandee Cohen
Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine
Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

Sorting Styles
All styles in their panels (Object, Paragraph, Character, Table, and Cell) are usually listed in the order they are created -- from first to last. You can instead sort them alphabetically by choosing Sort by Name in each of the styles panel menu. But you can also drag styles from one position to another, letting you customize the order in any way that makes sense to you.

-- Sandee Cohen
Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine
Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

Place EPS Images without the "White Background"
If you have legacy vector files saved in the EPS format (this includes Illustrator, FreeHand, and CorelDraw files), they may show up with a white background when you place them into InDesign. There are many ways to fix the problem, but here's my favorite:

Choose Show Import Options when you place an EPS file and check the Rasterize the PostScript option under Proxy Generation. Don't panic, you're not actually rasterizing the vector information; you're only changing how the preview appears.

From that point on, you don't have to select Show Import Options; InDesign applies the setting to all new placed images.

I prefer this solution because other methods require changing the file from EPS to AI. That's not always possible for FreeHand or Corel files, and it can take a while to process a large library of legacy documents. My method also works with any platform and doesn't require changing any other ID preferences.

-- Sandee Cohen
Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine
Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

Clear Overrides of Mixed Paragraph Styles
The Clear Overrides button at the bottom of the Paragraph Styles panel lets you quickly strip out the local formatting (indicated by a plus sign) in a paragraph. But you don't have to limit your selected text to a single paragraph style. Select a whole bunch of text, or even all the text in a story. Even though no one single paragraph style is selected, the Clear Overrides button still cleans up all the different paragraph styles.

-- Sandee Cohen
Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine
Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

Use Quick Apply to quickly edit styles
The Quick Apply feature does more than just allow you to apply styles. Press Cmd/Control-Return/Enter to open the Quick Apply panel. Then, type as many letters as necessary to get to the name of a specific style. BUT, instead of pressing the Return/Enter, press Cmd/Control-Return/Enter again. You're now in the Style Options dialog box for that style! Make your edits and then close to change the style definition.

-- Sandee Cohen
Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine
Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

What's New in CS3?
Have you updated to InDesign CS3 but have the nagging feeling that you're working with it like it's still CS2? To see what's new in InDesign CS3 as you work, go to Window > Workspace > New and Improved. This changes your menus so that new and modified features appear in blue.

-- Sandee Cohen
Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine
Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

Easier ways to modify and replace a template
Ever want to modify and then replace a template? If you simply double- click the template file or drag it onto the InDesign application, you have a copy of the template or an untitled document. That means you have to then rename the template with the same name as the original, and then replace the original.

Instead, choose File > Open, and navigate to the template file. When you choose the template file, look at the bottom of the dialog box and click the option to Open Original. This will open the template file as a template, instead of a copy or untitled document. Once you've made your changes, just save and close the document. You don't have to rename or write over the original file.

-- Sandee Cohen
Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine
Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

Double Paths Copied from Illustrator
Watch out when you copy paths from Illustrator into InDesign. Depending on the attributes applied to the path in Illustrator, you may wind up with more than one path in InDesign. For instance, double strokes or fills will always create multiple paths in InDesign. But even a single fill and stroke with a Twist effect will create multiple effects. The easy way to tell if you've pasted in multiple objects is to look at the Fill/Stroke display in the Tools panel. If you see question marks instead of colors, you know you've got multiple objects.

-- Sandee Cohen
Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine
Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

See Guides Only at Certain View Magnifications
When you zoom out on your InDesign document, do all those guides clutter up your screen? Sure, you can hide the guides or turn off the layer showing the guide or change the view options for the guides on a layer. But here's a better technique. Before you start dragging guides out, go to Layout > Ruler Guides, and change the View Threshold from 5% to something higher, like 101%. From that point on, any guide you create will only be visible when you are zoomed in to 101% or higher. This means that guides that you need for close up work are visible when you're zoomed in, but they're not visible when you zoom out to see the entire page.

-- Sandee Cohen
Senior Editor, InDesign Magazine
Author, InDesign CS3 Visual QuickStart Guide

Turn a Frame to a Grid of Frames
Need a whole grid of frames? You could use the Step and Repeat feature, but if you know how large you want the grid and not necessarily how large each frame should be, Step and Repeat can be a hassle. Instead, just draw one big frame to cover the size you want the grid to cover. Then, while that's selected, open the Scripts panel (Window > Automation > Scripts) and double-click on the MakeGrid script. That converts any single frame into a bunch of frames on a grid, according to your specifications (how much space between each one, and so on). This script is installed automatically in CS3, but in CS2 you'll need to install it from the sample scripts that come on the installer discs. To learn how to install scripts, or find where to download them from the Web (in case you don't have the installer discs anymore), go to: http://indesignsecrets.com/free-bundled-scripts-on-adobecom.php

--David Blatner
Editorial Director, "InDesign Magazine," co-host, InDesignSecrets.com

Sizing a Group or Image in CS3
InDesign CS3 radically changed the rules for scaling groups and images. You used to be able to select an image or a group and change the W or H fields in the Control panel and have it scale everything to that measurement. No longer! Fortunately, the functionality isn't gone, it just moved. To scale a frame and its image, or all the objects in a group, to a specific width or height, type that measurement in the scaling fields (the X or Y percentage fields, that usually say 100%). For example, if you replace 100% with "20 cm" then the object or group scales to that size.
--David Blatner
Editorial Director, "InDesign Magazine," co-host, InDesignSecrets.com

Getting Your Buttons and Hyperlinks Into PDFs
It's easy to make a button in InDesign with the Button tool, or by selecting any object and choosing Object > Interactive > Convert to Button. And it's relatively easy to make a hyperlink using InDesign's Hyperlinks panel (even though the user interface for hyperlinks definitely leaves something to be desired). But the number one problem people have with these interactive features is them not functioning once they get to Acrobat. Why? In almost every case, it's that they've neglected the most important step: Turn on both the Hyperlinks and Interactive checkboxes in the Export PDF dialog box. Without that last crucial step, you don't get bubkes!
--David Blatner
Editorial Director, "InDesign Magazine," co-host, InDesignSecrets.com

Resizing Tables by Dragging
You can resize a table with the Type tool by dragging the right or bottom edge. But if you want to resize all the rows, hold down the Shift key while you drag the bottom edge. To resize all the columns proportionally, Shift-drag the right edge. Or, to resize the table rows and heights at the same time, just drag the lower-right corner of the table with the Type tool. Resizing the table using this technique does not scale the text in the table.
--David Blatner
Editorial Director, "InDesign Magazine," co-host, InDesignSecrets.com

Quicker PDF Export of Books
You can open the PDF Export dialog directly from the Book palette by holding down the Option (Mac) or Alt (Windows) key while selecting the Print icon in the Book palette.
--John Feld

Switch Between Selection Tool and Direct Selection Tool
There are several ways to switch between the Selection tool and the Direct Selection tool quickly. When you're not editing text, you can press V for the Selection tool and A for the Direct Selection tool. I recommend that you use Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts to assign your own custom keyboard commands for these two tools that will also work when editing text.

You can also press Control/Ctrl-Tab to alternate between the Selection tool and the Direct Selection tool. In CS3, you have even more options. When you're editing text, you can press Esc to switch to the Selection tool. And double-clicking on a frame or graphic with the Selection tool switches to the Direct Selection tool (and vice versa)!

--David Blatner
Editorial Director, "InDesign Magazine," co-host, InDesignSecrets.com

Select a Table's Text or Cell
To select a cell within a table, click the cell with the Text tool and press the Esc key. This will select the cell. To place the text cursor in the cell, press the Esc key again.
-- John Feld

See What Files are Loaded
The Place dialog box in InDesign CS3 lets you select more than one item in a folder at a time and import them all at once. To select more than one item in the dialog box, Shift-click (to select contiguous items) or Command/Ctrl-click (to select discontiguous files). After you click Open, InDesign loads all the files into the Place cursor, showing you a thumbnail of the first one along with a number that shows the total number of files loaded. You can rotate through the loaded files by pressing the left or right (or up and down) arrows on your keyboard. If you decide you want to "throw away" one of the files (remove it from the Place cursor), press Esc.
--David Blatner
Editorial Director, "InDesign Magazine," co-host, InDesignSecrets.com

Align Guides to Objects
Of course, you can align objects to ruler guides. But you can also align ruler guides to objects. Just select the object and aim for one of the object's handles as you drag the guideline. The guideline will snap to the handle
--Claudia McCue

Quick Zoom Shortcuts
I love shortcuts, especially when navigating around my documents. Here are some of my favorites involving zooming in and out.
* Command-Option-5 highlights the zoom field in the lower-left corner of the document window. Just type the percentage you want and press Enter.
* Double-click the Hand tool to fit the spread in the window (or press Command-Option-zero/Ctrl-Alt-0)
* Double-click the Zoom tool to jump to 100% (or press Command/Ctrl-1).
* Command/Ctrl-spacebar-click zooms in, Command-Option/Ctrl-Alt-spacebar-click zooms out.
--David Blatner
Editorial Director, "InDesign Magazine," co-host, InDesignSecrets.com

Select a Table's Text or Cell
To select a cell within a table, click the cell with the Text tool and press the Esc key. This will select the cell. To place the text cursor in the cell, press the Esc key again.
-- John Feld

Creating a Knockout Rule
Want a line that has a "knockout area" on either side of it? For example, a line that when placed over an image will still be visible because it has white areas around it. It's easy to do: Select the line, make it at least one point thick, and change its style to a double line (double stripe). Now in the Stroke palette, set the line color to Paper and set the Gap color to Black (or whatever color you want the visible line to be). Finally, make an object style out of it, so you don't have to take these steps again!
--David Blatner
Editorial Director, "InDesign Magazine," co-host, InDesignSecrets.com

View Image Scaling with a Shortcut
Assign keyboard shortcuts to Select Container and Select Contents (Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts > Product Area: Object Menu). Now when you have an image frame selected with the Selection tool, you can quickly see the image's true scaling amount in the Control palette's Scale fields by using the shortcut for Select Contents. Press the shortcut for Select Container to get back to where you started.-- Anne-Marie Concepción

Quick Duplications
You probably already know you can hold down the Option (Mac) or Alt (Windows) key to drag and duplicate objects. The Option/Alt key can perform the same duplication function during other operations, too. For example, you can hold down the Option/Alt key as you choose Flip Horizontal from the Control palette menu. InDesign will duplicate and then flip the selected frame. Or place the cursor in the X field of the Control palette and change the value. Then press Option/Alt-Enter and InDesign moves a duplicate of the object to the new location.
-- Claudia McCue

Apply Only Color Attributes with the Eyedropper
If you load the attributes of an object with the Eyedropper tool while holding down the Shift key, the Eyedropper loads only the color of the object (ignoring all other object attributes). If you load attributes of an object with the Eyedropper and hold down Shift while applying the attributes to another object, InDesign applies only the color to the object.
-- Eliot Harper

Select the Return
You can triple-click or press Ctrl-Shift-\ or Command-Shift-\ to select a line. Both of these combinations also select the Return.
-- John Feld

Switch Swatches
The New Swatch button on the Swatches palette duplicates any selected swatch. To duplicate the swatch and open the New Color Swatch dialog, hold down Option/Alt while clicking it. To create a spot color version of a swatch, select the swatch and hold down Command/Ctrl while clicking the new swatch icon. You can also switch among RGB, CMYK, and Lab modes inside the Color Swatch dialog box by holding down Shift while clicking on the color proxy.
-- Eliot Harper

Find Missing Fonts
If you search for a missing font using the Find Font dialog box and can't locate the troublemaker on a page, cancel out of the Find Font box and bring up the Story Editor. Your cursor will be where the missing font is.
-- Jamie McKee

Quick Single-spread Documents
Do you want a two-page spread all by itself in its own file? Simply create a new two-page document and check the Facing Pages option as you create the file. Then turn to page one and choose Layout > Numbering & Section Options and start the page numbering at 2. Click OK to leave the dialog box, and you're done. Because it's an even number (page 2), InDesign moves it to the left side of the spread
-- Keith Gilbert

One-Click Selection in Palettes
If you're manually clicking or dragging inside of fields in palettes to select the fields' contents, you're doing it the hard way. Just click the label or icon to the left of the field-its contents are automatically selected, ready for you to replace it with new values. Remember that you can press the Up and Down arrow keys on your keyboard to increment a field's current setting
-- Anne-Marie Concepción

Change Color Modes Quickly
To change the color mode (RGB, CMYK, LAB) in the Color palette, Shift-click on the color spectrum bar (the color picker). If you see an out of gamut warning (the yellow triangle with exclamation point), click on the symbol to force the color to the nearest in-gamut color.
-- Erica Gamet

Say Hi to the Alien
In QuarkXPress, there's a hidden alien that could be induced to walk on to the screen and eradicate a selected page item with his ray gun. InDesign also has an alien, this one friendly. To see it, make a new Printing Preset (File > Print Presets > Define) and name it "Friendly Alien"; the settings don't matter. Save it, then go to the Print dialog, change the Print Preset to Friendly Alien, and click on the Preview window in the lower left corner. Soon a small space ship will appear.
-- John Feld

Fix Flaky Files
If your InDesign file is behaving erratically, it may be damaged. One easy troubleshooting technique is to choose File > Export and export the file in the InDesign Interchange format. This will create an .inx file. When you open the .inx file, InDesign rebuilds the file from the ground up -- hopefully without the problems of the original.
-- Keith Gilbert

Navigate the Control Palette
When you use the Control Palette, you don't need to open as many palettes. You can choose to dock the Control Palette at the top or bottom of your screen, or you can drag its left edge to tear it off and create a floating palette. To jump easily to the first field in the Control palette, press Command/Ctrl-6. From the first field, use Shift-Tab to highlight the Reference Point box. Use the arrow keys to highlight a specific Reference Point and press the Enter key to selec
-- Erica Gamet

Apply Swatches to Frames and Tables
You can apply a swatch to any frame or stroke by dragging a swatch from the Swatches palette and dropping it in a frame or on a stroke. Try this method for tables, too; you can apply a swatch to any table cell or cell border
-- Eliot Harper

Obtain Exact Color Values
The eyedropper tool lets you view the exact color used in a .psd, .tif, or .jpg file. However, it provides only an approximate color match for .eps images or for vector artwork. Furthermore, it doesn't sample spot colors from vector artwork. To see the exact CMYK or spot color that will be used to output any image or artwork on your page, activate the Separations Preview palette (Shift-F6). Choose Separations from the View popup menu and move your cursor over your artwork. The exact ink percentages are displayed next to the inks in the Separations Preview palette
-- Keith Gilbert, from InDesign Magazine #7, Aug/Sept 2005

Turn the Tools Palette
You can rotate and elongate the Tools palette so it fits your screen size and working style. For example, a longer, narrower Tools palette is good when your screen is small. If you rotate the palette, it can reside at the bottom right of the screen, where there's usually little action. Change the orientation in the Preferences dialog box or by double-clicking on the tab of the Tools palette
-- John Feld, from InDesign Magazine #7, Aug/Sept 2005

Move Precisely
Sometimes the most precise way to move objects on a page is to use your keyboard's arrow keys. Press arrow keys to move items in 1-pt increments. (That's the default; you can change this preference in the Units & Increments panel of the Preferences dialog box.) Add the Shift key to move items in 10-pt increments (or 10 times the current increment value). Press Command (Mac) or Ctrl (Windows) and the Shift key to move items in .1-pt increments (or one-tenth the increment value).
-- Keith Gilbert, from InDesign Magazine #7, Aug/Sept 2005

Add Ruler Guides Fast
To quickly add a ruler guide, double-click on a ruler to create a guide out from that point. For instance, for a vertical guide at 3 inches, double-click at 3 inches on the horizontal ruler. Add the Shift key to snap to the nearest ruler tick mark
-- Erica Gamet, from InDesign Magazine #7, Aug/Sept 2005

Make Tints
You can easily create a named, tinted color from any color in your Swatches palette in InDesign (including CMYK builds). Open your Swatches palette (Window > Swatches), choose the color you want to start with, type a percentage in the Tint box, then immediately click the New Swatch icon at the bottom of the palette. The new color is named the same as the original with the percentage indicated to the right of the name. Changes to the original color are reflected in the tint based on that color
-- Erica Gamet, from InDesign Magazine #7, Aug/Sept 2005

Maintain Vectors from Illustrator or FreeHand
Paths and shapes from Illustrator or FreeHand can be placed and edited directly in InDesign. Simply copy the item or items from the source document (Illustrator or FreeHand) and paste into your InDesign document. The paths are now fully editable within InDesign. To copy paths from Illustrator 10 and up, be sure that AICB is checked and the Preserve Paths button is selected in Illustrator's File Handling & Clipboard preferences.
-- Erica Gamet, from InDesign Magazine #7, Aug/Sept 2005

Switch Measurements Quickly
To use a unit of measure other than the one displayed (for example, centimeters instead of inches), type in the amount and the proper abbreviation for your desired unit of measurement and InDesign converts it for you. For example, if you set your measurement preferences to inches but want a three-millimeter drop shadow offset, enter 3mm in the Drop Shadow dialog box. You can also quickly switch to another unit of measure for the rulers by Control-clicking (Mac) or right-clicking (Windows) on either ruler and choosing the new unit of measure
-- Erica Gamet, from InDesign Magazine #7, Aug/Sept 2005

Paragraph Styles = Diagnostic Tool
When you edit a file created by someone else, you may not know the full range of styling applied to text. To find out, place the cursor in the text and create a New Paragraph Style. The dialog box immediately displays every style applied to the object.
-- Tracey Lawrence, from InDesign Magazine #7, Aug/Sept 2005

Reset Your Kerning and Tracking
The easiest way to reset the kerning and tracking for a range of selected text is to press Command/Ctrl-Option (Mac) or Alt-Q (Windows). I run all my copy with Optical Kerning on by default, as it does most of the work before I begin to edit.
-- Matt Davis, from InDesign Magazine #7, Aug/Sept 2005

Sample Images with the Eyedropper
Use the Eyedropper tool to sample colors from placed images. With the Eyedropper tool selected, move over the desired color in the placed image. Click to sample the color, then click the New Swatch icon in the Swatches palette, or Add to Swatches from the Color palette to store the color as a swatch. The eyedropper samples the color in the same color mode as the placed graphic. For example, sampling an RGB image creates an RGB swatch. Now you can apply that new color to an item by clicking on it with the full Eyedropper. When you want to sample a new color, be sure to use Option/Alt-click to get the empty Eyedropper.
-- Erica Gamet, from InDesign Magazine #7, Aug/Sept 2005

Build Guide Libraries
You can save a page's guides by selecting them and choosing Add Item from the Library's palette menu or by clicking the New Item button at the bottom of the palette. Then, when you want to use the same set of guides on another page, simply select it in the Library and choose Place Item(s) in the palette menu. This places the same guides, in the same positions, on the new page. You can't add to or place guides from a Library using drag and drop
-- Erica Gamet, from InDesign Magazine #7, Aug/Sept 2005

Suppress a Color Onscreen and in Output
Some publishers use a special spot color for items in a layout they don't want printed in certain situations, such as teacher's annotations in a textbook. The print vendor produces the teacher's edition normally -- using all color plates in the file -- but doesn't print the spot color plate for the student edition. The problem with these sorts of projects is that it's impossible to proof the student edition onscreen or in composite print/PDF output because there's no Hide command for individual inks or colors.

The solution is to create a new spot color that's white, named something like Hidden. When you need to suppress the unwanted ink for onscreen proofing, alias it to the Hidden color (using Ink Manager inside the Swatches palette menu) and turn on Overprint Preview in the View menu. Abracadabra, the color disappears. It will also print and export as it displays. Just don't forget to turn off the ink alias before you send the file to the print vendor.
-- Anne-Marie Concepción, from InDesign Magazine #7, Aug/Sept 2005

Find that Color
Find/Change can't search for a color swatch unless it's applied to text. If you need to find all instances of a color used in a document, temporarily turn it into a spot color (if it's not already) from its Swatch Options dialog box. Choose View > Output Preview > Separations, turn off all color plates except the new spot in the Separations palette, and scroll through your document. You'll see black "ink" appear everywhere the color is used. (For very long documents, you may find it faster to print only that spot color plate to separations and leave the Print Blank Pages checkbox off so you only get the pages with spot colors on them.) Change the color back to its original color mode if necessary when you're done
-- Anne-Marie Concepción, from InDesign Magazine #7, Aug/Sept 2005

Find Font Errors
If you suspect that errors in printing may be related to font problems, turn everything into outlines and print again. If the problem goes away, you have a font issue to deal with. Start by uninstalling the font from your font manager if you have one; otherwise just delete and replace the font. Don't leave any font as an outline, as it prevents editing and makes for a much larger file
-- John Feld, from InDesign Magazine #7, Aug/Sept 2005

Same Image, Multiple Frames
For an interesting effect, you can make one image look as if it's inside multiple frames:

1. Place the image in a circular frame.

2. Use Edit > Step and Repeat to create a row of frames.
3. Using the DIRECT Selection tool, shift-click to select each IMAGE (not frame).
4. Using the Alignment controls in the Control Palette, align first the top edges and then the left edges of the images within the frames. (Yes, you can align images just like you can align frames!)
5. Poof! It looks like you're looking through portholes.

Here's another method: Place the image in just one of the frames and choose Object > Arrange > Bring to Front. Now choose all the frames (the image frame and the empty frames) and choose Object > Pathfinder > Add. The image in the topmost frame appears in all the frames.
-- Claudia McCue, from InDesign Magazine #7, Aug/Sept 2005

Sort Menus Alphabetically
To sort menus in the menu bar in alphabetical order, select the required menu while holding Ctrl+Shift+Alt (Windows) or Shift+Option+Command (Mac). This shortcut sorts the menu and sub-menus in alphabetical order; it's also useful for sorting fonts in the Type > Font menu
-- Eliot Harper, from InDesign Magazine #7, Aug/Sept 2005

Shadow One Word
Wouldn't it be nice to have a shadow behind just one word in text? You can: Copy the word into its own text frame, choose Object > Fitting > Fit Frame to Content (or press Command/Ctrl-Option/Alt-C), and apply a drop shadow to the frame. Copy the frame to the Clipboard, then highlight the word in the main text and paste. The text of the word will be replaced with the shadowed inline frame.
-- Claudia McCue, from InDesign Magazine #7, Aug/Sept 2005

Thread Frames Fast
Situation: Big story in a frame, no existing empty text frames to thread it to, can't autoflow for whatever reason. Solution: The fastest way to manually thread a story, starting with just a single overset text frame, is to click on the overset icon with the Selection Tool to load the overset text in the cursor; then hold down the Option key (Mac) or Alt key (Windows) and drag out successive text frames. Every frame you Option/Alt-drag is automatically threaded to the previous one.
-- Anne-Marie Concepción, from InDesign Magazine #7, Aug/Sept 2005

Page Guides vs. Spread Guides
To create a horizontal ruler guide that crosses all pages of a spread, drag the guide onto the page while your cursor is on the pasteboard area to the left or the right of the spread. Or press Command/Ctrl while dragging a guide to make it a spread guide.
-- Keith Gilbert, from InDesign Magazine #7, Aug/Sept 2005

Zoom-sensitive Ruler Guides
Hold down the Option key (Mac) or Alt key (Windows) while dragging out a ruler guide to make it visible only at the current zoom level and larger. If you zoom out, the guide will disappear. When you zoom back to the previous magnification or above, the ruler guide will reappear
-- Keith Gilbert, from InDesign Magazine #7, Aug/Sept 2005

Harmless Error
When you open a file and get an alert saying, "Cannot open resource file," it probably means that the last time you quit the program with that file open, the Scripts palette was open and included a script. The alert is harmless-just cancel it and continue. To prevent its recurrence, close the Scripts window before closing the document.
-- John Feld, from InDesign Magazine #7, Aug/Sept 2005

Don't Forget the Info Box
The Info box, which shows the size and location of a selected frame, can be a very useful tool. Select an image and the Info box displays size, active and effective resolution, color space, and ICC profiles. Select a text box with the Text tool and the Info Box displays a count of characters, words, lines, and paragraphs. (It also shows this information for linked text boxes.) Select the frame with a Selection tool instead, and the box shows the current fill and stroke colors. When nothing is selected, the Info Box displays information about the document itself
-- John Feld, from InDesign Magazine #7, Aug/Sept 2005

Show Options When Placing
When you place content into your layout, click the Show Import Options checkbox to intercept a file and perform certain functions, such as stripping formatting from a Word file. You can access the Import Options dialog by holding the Shift key when you click on the Place button in the Place dialog box
-- Mordy Golding, from InDesign Magazine #7, Aug/Sept 2005

Preview Image Moves
When moving a cropped image inside a frame, hold down the mouse button for about a second before you move the object. You'll get a ghosted preview of the whole image in the frame
-- Jamie McKee, from InDesign Magazine #7, Aug/Sept 2005

Type-size Shortcuts
To change type size and leading incrementally, start by setting increment size (Preferences > Units & Increments). In your document, use Shift-Command/Ctrl-< to decrease the point size of selected type by one increment, and Shift-Command/Ctrl-> to increase the point size. Add the Option/Alt key to these combinations to multiply the increment by five. You can change leading via Option/Alt-Up and Option/Alt-Down arrow key combinations. Add the Ctrl/Command key to these combinations to multiply the increment by five
-- Erica Gamet, from InDesign Magazine #7, Aug/Sept 2005

Copy Text Formatting
Do you need to copy text formatting from one location to another? To do it quickly, select the Eyedropper tool, click on text you want to sample, and then use the Eyedropper to click or drag over text you want to modify. This technique even copies text attributes from one document to another. To set which qualities the Eyedropper tool will copy, double-click the Eyedropper tool and enable or disable the individual attributes
-- Erica Gamet, from InDesign Magazine #7, Aug/Sept 2005

Reveal Custom Kerning
One person's idea of appropriate kerning can be a compacted visual disaster for another person. My limit for the loosest and tightest kern is 30 (thousandths of an em). That means if some copy is kerned into -20 I will never go over +10 elsewhere in the document.

To see where kerning has taken place outside of paragraph and character styles, go to Preferences > Composition, select the Custom Tracking/ Kerning option, and click OK. In normal view mode (not in preview mode), InDesign now highlights in green text with custom tracking and kerning.
-- Matt Davis, from InDesign Magazine #7, Aug/Sept 2005

Quickly Convert Corner Points to Curves
Everyone knows that you can use the Direct Selection tool (the white arrow) to select a point on any frame. But did you know that if you hold down the Command and Option keys (Ctrl and Alt on Windows) you can drag on any corner point to convert it to a Bezier curve? Alternately, you can click once with those modifier keys on a curve point to convert it to a corner point.

Split Stories
A frequently-requested feature by InDesign users is the ability to split a long text thread into multiple pieces so that each text frame retains the text that's in it, but that the frames are no longer linked. There is no built-in feature to do this, but Adobe does bundle a script that does it for you. It's called SplitStories and you can find it on your install discs. Or, go to http://www.adobe.com/products/indesign/xml_scripting.html and download the bundle of scripts from there.

Better Text Wrap
When you assign a text wrap to an imported graphic, be sure to first select the graphic with the Selection (black arrow) tool. This applies the text wrap to the frame, not the frame's contents, which makes it easier to delete the graphic or replace it with a new graphic without deleting the text wrap
-- Keith Gilbert, from InDesign Magazine #7, Aug/Sept 2005

Break Words
To manually break a word at the end of a line, use a discretionary hyphen. Put your cursor where you want to break the word, then choose Type > Insert Special Character > Discretionary Hyphen or Command/Ctrl-Shift-Hyphen. If type should reflow so the word is no longer at a line ending, the discretionary hyphen disappears. To hyphenate a word that never breaks on that hyphen, use a non-breaking hyphen: Type > Insert Special Character > Nonbreaking Hyphen. To prevent a word or string of text from breaking, select the text and choose No Break from the Character or Control palette menu
-- Erica Gamet, from InDesign Magazine #7, Aug/Sept 2005

Edit Text Frames
You can edit text frames just like graphics frames and transform them into almost any shape. Use the Selection or the Direct Selection tool to select the text box, and then use the Pen tool to add anchor points. You can manipulate these anchor points just as you would any vector path
-- John Feld, from InDesign Magazine #7, Aug/Sept 2005

Multi-column Text, One-Column Headline
Making one headline span several columns of text in a multi-column text frame takes some trickery. Here's one way to do it.

1. Use the Text tool to create a text frame.

2. In Text Frame Options, choose the desired number of columns.
3. Use the Type on a Path tool on the text frame outline and type the headline.
4. Position the text brackets so that the text begins and ends above the text frame.
5. Thread the text frames by selecting the headline out-port and connecting it to the text frame.
6. To vertically distance the headline from the body text, apply a baseline shift to the headline.

Why bother with all these steps? Because you can use Object Styles and Apply Next Style to format this type of frame and its content with one click. Also, both the headline and the body appear together in the Story Editor.
-- Rufus Deuchler, from InDesign Magazine #7, Aug/Sept 2005

Delete Preference Files
You can delete InDesign's preference files when launching InDesign. To display this option dialog, launch InDesign, then immediately select Ctrl+Alt+Shift (Windows) or Ctrl+Option+Command+Shift (Mac OS).
-- Eliot Harper, from InDesign Magazine #7, Aug/Sept 2005

Extending a Line
Need to add rows or columns to a table? Here's the fastest way to add rows at the end of a table or columns at the right hand side of a table:

1. Hover your Text tool cursor over the bottom or right edge of the table so that the cursor changes to a double arrow.

2. Now, press and hold down the mouse button -- but still don't move the mouse.
3. Press and hold down the Option/Alt key.
4. Now move the mouse down (for extra rows) or to the right (for extra columns). The more you drag, the more rows or columns InDesign adds.

The Environment Dialog Box
One of the most useful dialog boxes in InDesign is also one of the least seen: The Environment dialog box. You can find this little creature by holding down the Command/Ctrl key and choosing About InDesign (from the Help menu on Windows, or the application menu on the Mac). The Environment dialog box tells you all about your version of InDesign, including what plug-ins are running. More importantly, it tells you about the current document, such as: Was it originally a QuarkXPress or PageMaker file? When was it last saved? And what special plug-ins were used to create it?

Jump from One Master
Do you have lots of master pages in your document? Need to jump from one to the next? It's a hassle to double-click on each of them in the Pages palette. Don't bother: Just use the Next Spread or Previous Spread features from the Layout menu. Better yet, just use the shortcuts: hold down Option/Alt and press Page Up or Page Down. When you're viewing any master page, this shortcut takes you to the next (or previous) one.

Build Guide Libraries
You can save a page's guides by selecting them and choosing Add Item from the Library's palette menu or by clicking the New Item button at the bottom of the palette. Then, when you want to use the same set of guides on another page, simply select it in the Library and choose Place Item(s) in the palette menu. This places the same guides, in the same positions, on the new page. You can't add to or place guides from a Library using drag and drop.
-- Erica Gamet, InDesign Magazine #7, Aug/Sept 2005

Stroke Frame and Table Corners
Here's how to make a stroke that appears only at the corners of a frame:

1. Create a new dashed stroke style by choosing Stroke Styles from the Stroke palette menu. Call it something like Corners.

2. Apply the stroke to a text or graphic frame and give it an adequate stroke width.
3. Return to the stroke style to edit Corners.
4. For Pattern Length, insert a value that's much larger than your frame.
5. For Corners, choose Adjust Gaps (which will keep the length of the dash fixed).
6. Choose Preview for real time fine-tuning.
7. Move the little ruler arrow until you achieve the desired result (or enter a value for Length).

You can then apply that stroke to any frame (of any size) and the corners will be identical for all objects. For surprising effects, try it on tables, too.
-- Rufus Deuchler, InDesign Magazine #7, Aug/Sept 2005

Look Back at History
If you hold down the Command/Ctrl key while you choose About InDesign from the InDesign menu (Mac) or Help menu (Win), you'll see the Component Information dialog box. It tells you exactly what version of InDesign you're running and which plug-ins are installed. The Document History section of the dialog tells you when the document was first created and by what version of InDesign, when it was last saved, whether the file was ever converted from Quark or PageMaker, and other information. All of it may be useful for diagnosing a troublesome document.
-- Keith Gilbert, InDesign Magazine #7, Aug/Sept 2005

Quick Switch for Measurements
You know you can type any measurement into any number field. (For example, even if your measurement preferences is set to inches, you can type "3p" into the X field to position an object at three picas.) But sometimes it's helpful to actually change InDesign's rulers. You can change the ruler measurement system in the Preferences dialog box, but here's an even faster method: Press Command-Option-Shift-U/Ctrl-Alt-Shift-U. Each time you press this shortcut, InDesign rotates through to the next measurement system (millimeters to centimeters to ciceros, and so on). One more technique you should know about: You can right-click on a ruler (or Control-click with a one-button mouse) to set the measurement system for that one ruler.

Recompose All Stories
Sometimes you need to re-compose all your stories in your InDesign document. This could be because you changed your hyphenation method, because you switched languages, or for a handful of other reasons. Or perhaps you simply want to make double-sure that all of your stories are composed with the very current settings. But how to do that?

One way is to turn on the checkbox "Recompose all stories when User Dictionary is modified" in the Dictionary panel of the Prefences dialog box. Now make any change in the user dictionary, save this change, wait until the stories have been re-composed, and finally revert the change in the User Dictionary.

A much faster method is to choose Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts, choose the product area "Text and Tables," scroll down the list to the entry "Recompose all Stories immediately" and assign a keyboard shortcut to it. Save your change, and then just type your new keyboard shortcut! --Courtesy of Rudi Warttmann, ITIP.biz

Place a Guide with a Click (or Two)
You can place a guide on your page by double-clicking at the appropriate position on the horizontal or vertical ruler. (If you can't see the rulers around the page, choose View > Show Rulers, or press Command/Ctrl-R.) Even better, hold down the Shift key when you place the guide and it will be placed at the location of the nearest ruler tick mark. That is, you don't have to click exactly on the 100mm tick mark to get a guide there; just get near that tick mark and Shift-double-click.

Switch to the Next Window
I almost always work with several InDesign document windows open at the same time and I often need to swtich from one window to the next. Sure, I could use the Window menu to do this, but it's often much faster to press Command/Ctrl-tilde to switch to the next window Command-Shift/Ctrl-Shift-tilde to switch to the previous window. The tilde key is in the upper-left corner of the keyboard on US keyboards.

If you have a non-US keyboard, the keyboard shortcut might be different. You can customize it to whatever you want by choosing Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts, picking "Views, Navigation" from the Product Area popup menu, and finding the Next Window and Previous Window commands.

Jump to the End of the Story
One of the best ways to get efficient in InDesign is to learn the keyboard shortcuts for navigating around text. For example, you probably know that Command/Ctrl-Down Arrow moves to the beginning of the next paragraph. Here's a few that I find many people don't take advantage of:

• Command/Ctrl-End jumps to the end of the current text story

• Command-Shift/Ctrl-Shift-End selects from the current text cursor position to the end of the story, even if the end of the story is overset (past the end of the last text frame).
• Replace the Home key above to jump or select to the beginning of the story.
• Note that on some keyboards, you may have to add another modifier key. For example, on my PowerBook I have to add the "Fn" key before pressing the right-arrow key to select to the end of the story (because Fn-Right Arrow equals the End key on my keyboard).

Thread Backwards
Just about everyone knows that you can click on the out-port of a text object to click on or draw another text frame that creates or continues a text thread. But you can also click on the in-port of a text frame-even if it's the first frame in the thread-to start the thread in a different frame. This is especially useful when you place a story, then realize you want the headline in its own frame so you can give it a drop shadow.
-- Mordy Golding, from InDesign Magazine #7, Aug/Sept 2005

Linking Multiple Text Frames
You can easily link three or more text frames using the Option/Alt key. To link existing text frames, click in the overflow box of the first frame, then Option/Alt-click in each subsequent text frame. To create and link text frames on-the-fly, create the first frame, click in its overflow box, then Option-click and drag to create each subsequent frame.
-- Erica Gamet, from InDesign Magazine #7, Aug/Sept 2005

Lock Objects when Aligning or Centering
If you select two objects on your page that aren't overlapping and use the Align or Control palette to center them, both objects will move. That can be very annoying if you wanted one of them to stay put. Similarly, if you align two objects horizontally, the left-most object always stays in position and the other one moves. Fortunately, you can tell InDesign that an object should not move by selecting it and choosing Object > Lock Position (Command/Ctrl-L). If an object is locked when you use the Align features, then all the objects align to it.

Speedy One-Word Spell Check
InDesign CS2's new Dynamic Spelling feature -- it flags misspelled words as you type-is useful and convenient for on-the-fly corrections, but it can be distracting, especially when you're trying to concentrate on something other than spelling. For the best of both worlds, assign a keyboard shortcut to Dynamic Spelling with Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts. Keep the feature turned off (it's off by default), but when you're curious if a certain word is spelled correctly, use the keyboard shortcut to briefly toggle it on. If the word is misspelled, it'll sprout a (non-printing) red underline. Right-click on the word to choose the correct spelling or add it to the dictionary from the contextual menu. If the word is spelled correctly, nothing changes -- no underline appears. Press the shortcut again to toggle Dynamic Spelling off and continue with your work.
-- Anne-Marie Concepción, from InDesign Magazine #7, Aug/Sept 2005

Fast Word Replacement
Create your own shorthand dictionary for words you type all the time (or that tend to slow you down) by using InDesign CS2's new Autocorrect feature. The secret is to create a string of text that would not otherwise occur; this is a placeholder for your desired text. For instance, if you routinely butcher the capitalization of the word "InDesign," set up the text "qq" to stand in for "InDesign" by opening the Autocorrect pane in Preferences, choosing Add, and entering the Misspelled Word (qq) and the Correction (InDesign). Now when you type the word "qq," Autocorrect swaps the correct text for the placeholder. Autocorrect ignores the string of text if it occurs within a word.
--Erica Game, from InDesign Magazine #7, Aug/Sept 2005

Quick Tints of Colors
Need a color a little lighter or darker than the one you've got? When you edit or create a new color (in the Colors palette or the New Color Swatch dialog box), you can hold down the Shift key while dragging the sliders to make all the others sliders move, too. The result is a more or less saturated version of the color you started with.

What's That Override?
To see local overrides in InDesign CS2, hold the mouse over the plus sign of the name of a paragraph or character style name in the Paragraph Styles and Character Styles palettes.
-- Jamie McKee, from InDesign Magazine #7, Aug/Sept 2005

No More Rasterized Text
Drop shadows and other transparency can be very effective, but not when small text such as a caption rasterizes in the flattening process at print time. For worry-free designs, create at least two layers in your document: One at the top level for all of your text, and one at the bottom level for all of your images. Text that appears above a transparency effect in the stacking order will never rasterize.
-- Mordy Golding, from InDesign Magazine #7, Aug/Sept 2005

Removing a Frame from a Thread, Part 2
I previously suggested a method for removing a text frame from a story. Several people wrote to ask me why I shouldn't just delete the frame itself. Sure, that works, but the hard part is keeping the frame on the page and just making the story skip past it. Then tip-of-the-week reader Arsim Shala from Kosovo wrote me with a great solution: Select the frame you want removed, cut it to the clipboard (Command/Ctrl-X), and then paste it back in the same place (Command-Option-Shift-V/Ctrl-Alt-Shift-V). Now, if you want the frame to be empty, double-click on it to place the Text cursor in the frame, press Command-A/Ctrl-A to select all the text, and press Delete. This is one of those tips that is much faster to do than to explain in writing.

Thanks for the tip, Arsim! In appreciation, we're going to give you a free 2-issue subscription to InDesign Magazine! (You can pick any two past issues, or be signed up to get the next two issues free.)

Typing a Tab in a Table
Need to place a tab character inside a table cell? You can choose Type > Insert Special Character > Tab. Or, even easier, on the Macintosh, just press Option-Tab. If you do this a lot on Windows, you should apply a keyboard shortcut to the Tab character by:
1. Choose Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts
2. If you haven't already created a custom shortcut set, click New Set
3. Choose Type Menu from the Product Area popup menu
4. Choose Insert Special Character: Tab from the Commands list.
5. Choose Tables from the Context popup menu.
6. Type a keyboard shortcut (such as Ctrl-Alt-Shift-Tab) in the New Shortcut field.
7. Click Assign and then click OK.

Remove A Frame From a Thread
You've linked four text frames (lets call them A, B, C, and D) but now you realized that frame B was supposed to be some other text story, so you want to take it out of the thread. Can you do it? First, unlink text frame A from the thread by double-clicking on its out port with the Selection tool. Next, select text frame B and unlink it from the thread by double-cliking on its out port. Finally, select frame A and link it to frame C (by clicking frame A's out port and then clicking anywhere on top of frame C). This works because when you unlink text frame A, InDesign preserves the thread from frame B to C, to D.

Custom Placeholder Text
When you need to fill a text frame (or a bunch of linked text frames) with "dummy" text, place the text cursor in the frame and choose Type > Fill with Placeholder Text. InDesign applies the current text formatting (the style of the text where the cursor was placed) to all the text it adds. By default, the text is quasi-Latin based on the Lorem Ipsum text that designers have been using for decades. However, if the Caps Lock key is held down, InDesign uses random words from an oration by Cicero. Don't like that either? Save any text file (ASCII txt file only) in the InDesign application folder with the name placeholder.txt and InDesign will use that text instead!

Centering Objects on the Page, Part 2
Last week's tip focused on aligning objects to the page (rather than other objects on the page). I received a number of emails pointing out that InDesign Magazine already published another solution to centering an object on a page:

1. Select the object(s) and cut them to the clipboard (Command/Ctrl-X).
2. Press Command/Ctrl-0 (zero) to go to Fit in Window view.
3. Paste (Command/Ctlr-V)

I like this method of centering objects, but it is not always entirely precise. Sometimes (depending on the actual percentage view when you are in Fit in Window), the object appears slightly off center -- though usually only a tiny distance from the center.

For other cool methods of centering and aligning objects on your page, see the article in an upcoming issue of InDesign Magazine!

Center an Object on the Page
InDesign offers all kinds of cool features, but some of the basic features it lacks can leave you scratching your head. For example, the Align palette and the Control palette make it easy to align two or more objects along their edges or centers. But how do you align one or more objects to the page itself? The trick is to create an object that is the same size as the page itself. I typically press F (for the Frame tool), draw out a small frame, press Command/Ctrl-6 to jump to the Control palette, type zero-tab-zero-tab-W-tab-H-enter (where H and W are the width and height of the page). Now select that object along with the ones you want to align and use the aforementioned palettes to align them. Store the big object as a snippet in Bridge, a Library, or your desktop for use later, and then (optionally) delete it from the page.

Duplicating a Page
Need to make a slight variation on a layout but keep the original? You can duplicate a page in your document by holding down the Option/Alt key while dragging it in the Pages palette.

Moving Objects Behind Other Objects
You know that you can select one object behind another one by Command/Ctrl-clicking, right? Just keep clicking with Command/Ctrl key held down until you select the one you want. But now how do you move that object? You could use the Control palette to adjust its X and Y coordinates. Or, even cooler: Just drag the centerpoint of that object. If you drag anywhere other than the centerpoint, you move the topmost object. But the centerpoint moves the object itself.

Go and Fit in Window
You know you can jump to a particular page by double-clicking on it in the Pages palette. But did you know that you can hold down the Option/Alt key while double-clicking to jump to that page and switch to Fit Page in Window at the same time?

Copying Color Swatches
Michael Brady pointed out a clever way to copy color swatches from one document to another in InDesign CS2: Just select them in the first document (Command/Ctrl-click to select swatches that aren't next to each other) and then drag them from the palette to the second document (the one you want to add them to). Simple, easy, fast. I wish we could do that with paragraph styles and object styles, too!

Target That Page
If you drag the vertical scroll bar halfway down, you'll end up about halfway through your long InDesign document. But if you follow that by pressing Shift-Page Down (to jump to the next page), you may end up on a very unexpected page. Why? Because this keyboard shortcut takes you to the next page after the currently-targeted page in the Pages palette, not the one you're actually looking at. So after dragging the scroll bar, click once anywhere on the page or pasteboard. That targets this spread. Now the shortcut will work as expected.

Linking Two Full Frames
Unlike QuarkXPress, InDesign can link two text frames when both frames contain text. When you do this, the stories in the text frames are merged into a single story. If the text in the first text frame did not end with a carriage return, InDesign will run the text in the second frame into the last paragraph of the first text frame.

Follow-up on Search and Replace Quote Marks
One of my favorite things about tips & tricks is that they are sometimes so obvious, and yet I learn new ones all the time. Here is a great example.

In response to last week's tip about converting straight quotes to curly ("typographer's") quotes, Martin Braun wrote to us from Germany:

"I think there is an even faster way to set all quotation marks to typographer's style: Just replace all quotation marks by another character or combination of characters that is not included in the text (e.g. "###"). Then replace "###" with " (the quotation mark). InDesign will automatically use the correct quotation mark." (Note that this only works when the Use Typographer's Quotes checkbox is turned on in the Preferences dialog box.)

Thanks, Martin!

Search and Replace Quote Marks
I was recently sent a file that had straight quotation marks (both single and double) instead of curly (typographer's) quotes. It turns out that it's harder to replace these than it should be. Here are two methods, each with their pros and cons.

• Method 1: Find/Change
  It's easy to search for quotes: Just type a single or double quote mark in the Find What field of the Find/Change dialog box. But how do you convert a straight single quote to a curly quote? There is a keyboard shortcut (different on Mac OS and Windows) to type curly quotes, but why bother trying to remember it? Just pick a special character from the little flyout menu to the right of the Change To field (it's the one labeled with a small black triangle).

  Unfortunately, you have to pick either the left or the right quote -- so you should probably search for a space character followed by a quote first. That will find most of the beginning quotes (because there is usually a space before an open quote mark). Replace that with a space followed by the Single or Double Left Quotation Mark (from that flyout menu). Next search for all the paragraph characters (again, from that menu) followed by a quote mark. That'll find all the quote marks at the beginning of a sentence. The quote marks that are left over are probably close marks, so you can search for all the rest of the quote marks and change them to the Single or Double Right Quotation Mark.

• Method 2: Export/Import
  Here's a far faster way to accomplish the same thing. (Thanks to Anne-Marie Concepcion for the clue to this solution.) Place the flashing text cursor in the story and choose File > Export. Then choose InDesign Tagged Text from the Format popup menu and click Save (noting where you're saving the file, of course). Now select the whole text story in your document, delete it, choose File > Place, and select the file you just saved out. Before you click OK, turn on Show Import Options. Now, when you click OK, InDesign offers you the option of replacing your quotes with typographer quotes. Turn it on, click OK, and you're done.

The first solution takes longer, but is great when you have a bunch of different text stories in your document (or you want to search across multiple open documents). The second solution is faster, but only works one story at a time.

Save All Open Documents
I have 15 InDesign files open, and I've just performed a Find/Change across them all. (Did you know you can do that? Just choose All Documents in the Find/Change dialog box.) Now I want to save them all. It's a hassle to switch to each window and choose File > Save. Avery Raskin to the recue! He recently pointed out to me the hidden keyboard shortcut for Save All: Command-Option-Shift-S (or Ctrl-Alt-Shift-S). That just saved me a bunch of time. That's what I like about InDesign: You learn something new everyday.

Hide and Seek Side Palettes
To expand or contract all the side palettes (the palettes that are stashed along the left or right side of the monitor), press Command-Option-Tab, or Ctrl-Alt-Tab. Alternately, you can Option/Alt-click on one of the palette tabs to expand or contract all the side palettes on that side of the screen.

Clear Overrides in a Paragraph
You've got a paragraph with a paragraph style applied, but part of the paragraph has local overrides (like font, size, color, or whatever) that you want to get rid of. If you select some text (such as a word or two) and click the Remove Overrides button in the Paragraph Styles palette, InDesign removes any local formatting applied to that text. But if you place the cursor in the paragraph and don't actually select any text before clicking this button, InDesign removes the local formatting from the entire paragraph.

Get Those Points
You've applied a Corner Effect to a frame, but now you want to edit the path slightly with the Direct Selection tool. Unfortunately, the Corner Effects don't actually place editable points on your frame; they just simulate the rounded corners or inverse corners (or whatever effect you've applied). The Pathfinder palette to the rescue! In CS2, simply open the Pathfinder palette (Window > Object & Layout > Pathfinder), select the frame, and click the Open Path or the Close Path button. The corner effects suddenly get converted to real Bezier points!

Manage Your Palettes Better
Let's face it: InDesign has a LOT of palettes, and a huge amount of time each day is spent just opening the right set of palettes, positioning them, closing other palettes, and so on. Make life easier for yourself by creating workspaces. Workspaces remember which palettes are opened (or closed) and where they're located on the screen. To make a workspace, set up the screen just the way you want it and then choose Window > Workspace > Save Workspace. InDesign then lets you name your workspace whatever you want. Later, when your palettes are all mixed up again, you can choose that workspace from the same Workspace submenu. Make one workspace for editing text, one for laying out pages, one for proofing, and so on.

Aligning Decimals in a Table
How on Earth are you going to align the decimal points in that column of numbers in your table? No problem. Just select the whole column (choose the Type tool and click over the top of the column when you see the bold down-arrow cursor), open the Tabs palette (Window > Tabs), select the Decimal Tab Stop in the palette, and click in the palette's ruler where you want the decimals to be aligned. The cool thing is that this works without you typing a tab character into each cell!

Go Back to the Previous Page
Two of my favorite underused features in InDesign are the Go Back and Go Forward commands (hiding under the Layout menu, even though they should be under the View menu). Let's say you're in the middle of your document and you decide to jump to a master page. Now, you want to return to the page you were last on. Choose Go Back! (Faster, press Command/Ctrl-Page Up). It's like navigating back through pages you've seen in a Web browser. Then you can choose Go Forward (Command/Ctrl-Page Down) to navigate forward again.

Drag Into New Frame
You know you can drag-and-drop a graphic or text file into InDesign from the Finder, Windows Explorer, or Bridge. But if you drag the file on top of an empty frame, InDesign fills that frame with the incoming file. If that's not what you want to do, hold down the Command/Ctrl key while dragging. This forces InDesign to create a new frame for it.

Fast Edit Original
If you select an image and click the Edit Original button in the Links palette (or choose Edit > Edit Original), InDesign launches the program that created that graphic. Actually, it's based on whatever application the operating system thinks should open the file. So if you export a PDF from InDesign, re-import it into another InDesign page and then choose Edit Original, the PDF opens in Acrobat (not InDesign, of course). The fastest way to choose this feature: Option/Alt-double-click on a graphic with the Selection or Direct Select tool.

Show Your Options
The Show Options checkbox inside the Place dialog box is sticky -- that is, if you turn it on, it remains on each time you place until you turn it off. However, instead of turning on and off the checkbox, hold down the Shift key when you click the Open button. The Shift key forces the Options dialog box to open whether or not the checkbox is on.

Tip from Creative Suite Conference
Here's a tip I just learned today while attending a session at "The Creative Suite Conference" in London. While I already knew that Adobe Bridge can display a thumbnail preview of the first page of InDesign documents, I didn't realize that it could show a preview of every page... if you save your file as an InDesign template. (You can choose between a document and a template in the Save As dialog box.) Because Bridge can scroll through these thumbnails, you can effectively use Bridge as a (low-res) InDesign reader, even if you don't have InDesign running. Note that when you open a template file, you'll get a new "Untitled" document unless you choose "Open Original" in the Open dialog box. Using Open Original will open the file with its proper name.

--Courtesy of Branislav Milic and Sandee Cohen

Better Drop Shadows
Want better-looking drop shadows? Normal drop shadows are cool, but they're too pure. You'll get a much more natural drop shadow if you increase the Noise value in the Drop Shadow dialog box a little -- you only need 5 or 6 percent to help.

Switch to Type Tool Fast
If you double-click on a text frame with either the Selection tool or the Direct Select tool, InDesign automatically switiches to the Type tool and places the blinking cursor where you double-clicked. Need to get back to the Selection tool again? Here's one way to do it: Command/Ctrl-click on the text frame and then press V.

Change Object Shape
Need to change one frame shape into another? Check out the Convert Shape submenu (under the Object menu). Want to make a bunch of objects into starbursts? First double-click the Polygon Frame tool to open the Polygon Settings dialog box and specify settings for a starburst. From then on you can select any frame and then choose Object>Convert Shape>Polygon to get those same starburst settings.

More Quick Apply Features
Here are some hidden shortcuts for the Quick Apply feature i