Comments on: Hidden Gems: The Story Editor

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 22:14:54 +0000

@RG: That sounds very strange. You open the story in Story Editor, you select the text that is overset (it has a red line next to it in the story edtior), delete it, and it comes back?

By: RG

RG — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 21:49:13 +0000

All I want to do is DELETE the overset text (in a table) and I have spent two hours pulling my hair out with no luck. I keep seeing that you can supposedly edit text in Story Editor. I can delete the text that is there, but I can make the 40-50 rows of blank “Overset” rows go away. Maddening. I must be missing something simple. Any ideas?

By: FredHead

FredHead — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 18:17:24 +0000

I just started using Quark, and the first feature I desperately wanted out of it was this. Oh well, I’m stuck with Quark now, but someday maybe they’ll wise up and do something similar – or we’ll switch software.

By: Terri Stone

Terri Stone — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:46:04 +0000

I too heart the Story Editor and have since using it in PageMaker. When Adobe added it to InDesign, I actually squealed.

Why yes, perhaps I do need to get out more.

By: Scott Citron

Scott Citron — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:04:59 +0000

Great article, Steve, on one of my fav ID features. Adding to point #1, the Story Editor is also particularly helpful when editing text that’s upside down or sideways because it’s on a document panel that folds. Granted, this problem is lessened now that ID has a Rotate Spreads command, but using the Story Editor is still faster and more efficient. Many thanks.

By: Greg Ledger

Greg Ledger — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 22:37:29 +0000

Hi,
Great piece on Story Editor. It is really, really helpful when you are trying to select text in an XML tagged document. It’s difficult in Layout view to select just the right text when, either before or after the tag, but easy as pie in Story Editor. The one caveat is that you have to edit text in an anchored text frame separately from the rest of the story it is anchored too.

Cheers.

By: Anne-Marie

Anne-Marie — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 15:34:16 +0000

Great list Steve!

Story Editor is great when you’re testing/playing with different colors to apply to a text selection. You can select the text in Story Editor and apply the swatch … that way the Layout view shows you the actual color applied to the type instead of the color’s complement, which ID does when you’ve selected type.

I think you covered this in point #1 but just wanted to bring it out more.

Also I made a cheat sheet of special characters in ID a while back, and it includes all the permutations for ones that appear in the Story Editor. Here’s the post with the link to the cheat sheet PDF:
http://indesignsecrets.com/free-guide-to-indesign-special-characters.php

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 13:37:54 +0000

Wow! Steve, you have totally put all my favorite arguments for the Story Editor into one place. I agree: the Story Editor is one of my favorite features in InDesign.

I remember trying to convince the folks at Quark to add a Story Editor for many years. They just didn’t get it. It’s soooo helpful! Everyone get in the habit of Cmd/Ctrl-Y!