Changing InDesign’s Default Ruler Measurements
PPV wrote:
I am having trouble changing my document settings from picas to inches. I change them by Ctrl+clicking the ruler — but is there another way to do this so the change stays every time I open InDesign?
It’s great that you know how to change the measurement systems in the rulers by Control-clicking on them (or right-clicking if you have a two-button mouse… I encourage you to get a two-button mouse, or — if you have an Apple magic mouse, just program it to do a “right-click” when you lean it to the right). You can also change them with a keyboard shortcut.
But you’re correct that this changes the rulers for just this one document. Measurements are document-wide settings, so they apply to just one document at a time.
However, if you close all your documents (what we in the biz call the “no pub state”) and then change the ruler measurements, it will affect all new documents you create from now on.
But, wait! How can you change the rulers when no documents are open? (You can’t see any rulers.) The answer is the Preferences dialog box, which you can get to from the InDesign menu on the Mac, or the Help menu in Windows. The Units & Increments pane of this big ol’ dialog box is the ticket:
That’s how you change all the “default settings” in InDesign: change them while all docs are closed. For example, you can add color swatches to the Swatches panel, or new styles to the Paragraph Styles panel, or change various settings in the preferences dialog box, and so on. Not all the controls in the Preferences dialog box are document-wide; some are application wide (they change the app, whether documents are open or not). Read more about that here and get a visual guide to which is which here.
I have changed my ruler settings tons of times in the preferences panel (in the no pub state) and it reverts back to picas, regardless if I have using my own created workspace. Is there any other solutions when the above doesn’t work? It is so annoying…
One thing to remember is you have to quit Indesign to have any changes you made be permanent. If you have a crash without quitting, the changes will be lost. I’ve also known many people who insist on using force quit to speed up the Indesign closing process. If you are one of those, you lose the changes you made.
You have to remember that NO documents can be open when you’re trying to set defaults. Otherwise the prefs just apply to the document that’s open.
It also doesn’t work retroactively. Ruler units get saved with your document and so what you get on opening a document is what you last saved it with.
If you are working on a document, it is also handy to remember you can cycle through the measurements using CMD(Cntrl)+OPT+SHIFT+U
as explained here.
indesignsecrets.com/change-measurement-systems-on-the-fly.php
…The answer is the Preferences dialog box, which you can get to from the InDesign menu on the Mac, or the Help menu in Windows…
En Windows: Edicion<Preferencias<Unidades e incrementos. No es necesario Help.
Felicidades y Gracias, me gusta mucho In design Secrets
I always encourage my students to resist the temptation to change Picas to Inches. The problem with inches is that you lose the ability to finely nudge effects like drop shadows, bevels, or glows because the smallest inch increment is .0625.
Beyond perhaps creating your document when first starting, I rarely, if ever, need to think in inches ever again. And even in that case, you can always input a value in inches even if you’re using Picas by simply adding ‘i’ after the amount. InDesign with then translate the value back to Picas.
With Ruler Units set to Picas (or almost anything other than Inches) nudging effects can be very small, like 1 point at a time (or 1 mm, for example). BTW, to nudge effects I simply highlight the field value by clicking on its label or icon and then tap the up or down arrow keys.
Great tips, Scott! If we were really disciplined we’d use mm …. tiny increments *and* a base 10. But in the meantime, I’m also a major pica gal.