Autoflow Text when Pasting
O.B. wrote:
Let’s say I am online and I see an article on a web page. I copy and paste the whole article into InDesign, but I only get one frame. Is there an option that automatically add pages so that I see the whole story?
One of the most important hidden features in InDesign is Shift-clicking with the Place cursor. When you hold down the Shift key, the Place cursor changes from placing a single text frame to creating an automatic flow of text, adding pages to the document as necessary, until the whole story is imported.
However, this doesn’t work when pasting text, because there is no Place cursor! Drat, foiled again. Fortunately, you can kind of work around it:
- Make sure the Selection or Direct Selection tool is chosen in the Tool panel.
- Paste the text in. InDesign creates a small, square frame in the middle of the page.
- Click in the out port (the one with the red + symbol in it). That loads the Place cursor with the story.
- Press the Delete key to delete the frame you just created.
- Shift-click to create a new frame with auto flow (adding frames and pages as necessary).
Seems line a painful workaround, but it goes really fast when you get used to it.
Of course, if you do this a lot, or you really want the autoflow feature built-in to the program itself, there are also two plug-ins you should know about: InFlow from Em Software, and EasyFlow from 65bit software.
That’s a great tip, thanks!
I know this is an old post, but…
You might want to check out AutoFlow Pro as well.
This is no doubt very simple,
How do you continue flowing text
I have 60 pages already in my book layout and would like to continue the text flow with extra text so that all pages will have text moving down as I edit text above?
Hope that makes sense.
Hi.. It was good lesson. Thanks for That.
Sorry to be commenting on such an old post but I’m facing the same issue.
Your workaround is useful but it does create a new frame. What do you do if you want to flow the text into a master frame that is already set up?
@Mike: Not a problem. Once the text is on the clipboard, shift-option/alt-click on the master text frame (on the document page) to override it. Then click inside with the Type tool and paste. If additional pages are not added automatically, then you’ll have to 1. load the place cursor from the overset frame; 2. create a new page (if you don’t have one already); 3. shift-click on the master page text frame on this new page.
(If you have a text frame on a left-master page that is threaded to a text frame on a right-master page, then ID will automatically add pages and thread them when you paste, so you don’t need to do the steps above.)
One important detail to the above. The master text frame has to be empty on the master page for this to work.