Comments on: InDesignSecrets Podcast 109

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 16:26:16 +0000

@Judy: I haven't noticed any change in that behavior in CS4. I could be wrong, but my guess is that something changed with the Word file... local formatting was somehow added to it. Here's some info on removing overrides.

By: Judy Hewitt

Judy Hewitt — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 15:00:07 +0000

Related to my previous post, I have found that if I create new writer templates by exporting styled text from CS4, modify those styles in Word (making text all Times, color black), then place the new Word file, all text comes in correctly.

By: Judy Hewitt

Judy Hewitt — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 14:28:03 +0000

David: You talk in this episode about supplying writers with a Word file that contains all your INDD style sheets, then when the writing returns his writing assignment you can place the file and since the style sheets from Word match the INDD styles, all the text correctly styles automatically. I’ve been doing this in CS3 for about a year and it has worked beautifully. However, I just discovered in CS4 that when I bring in one of my writer’s Word files, not all of the INDD style sheet attributes get applied to the text. For example: The style sheet “head_1″ in my Word file is set to Times 12pt, black. In my INDD CS4 file it is set to Minion Bold, 24pt, White. In this case, the color did change to white, but the font remained in Times as did the pt. size. Is this a known bug in CS4? What’s happening is that the style sheet in INDD has a plus sign beside it. If I option click it, all the attributes come through. But in CS3 I didn’t have to do this. It’s going to cost our production folks a lot of time to go through hundreds of pages and option click each style sheet.

By: Anne-Marie

Anne-Marie — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:12:00 +0000

Thank C David! So you have used the Maggying technique and it helped? (I’ve used it and can attest, but always good to get corroboration…)

By: C David

C David — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:31:28 +0000

GREAT MS Word Tips. Especially “Magg-ing” the file! I’ve been creating new Word templates for my company’s reports and I’ve lost years of my life and have less hair b/c of that final !?#%#(! paragraph return (and many other annoying Word habits). Thanks! I’m sending a link of this podcast to everyone i know.

By: Anne-Marie

Anne-Marie — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 15:42:39 +0000

I don’t know, I still miss the “single pasteboard/many pages” concept in PageMaker. I got used to living without it in Quark.

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 02:40:05 +0000

@Furry: You are absolutely right. But we were mostly talking about our own experiences, not necessarily the industry as a whole. I started with PM 1.0 back in the mid-80s, but found it frustrating and found QX 1.0 much more to my tastes. But around here (Seattle area), it was an Aldus town (then later an Adobe town) until very late in the game.

By: Furry

Furry — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 00:36:14 +0000

I am surprised that, in talking about InDesign’s 10th birthday, you went on so much about Quark but never a mention of PageMaker, the loins from which InDesign sprang.

Just this week I have persuaded a colleague who was still using PageMaker (he is retired and so doesn’t need to work cooperatively with anyone else and has limited funds to spend on software) that it really was time to upgrade to InDesign. He was amazed at how easy it was to do so and is now happily exploring all the additional features that InDesign gives him.

I never used Quark Xpress but used PageMaker for many years and, at the time, regarded it as a pretty useful program. It looks and feels so clunky now!

By: Jonathan F. Mayer

Jonathan F. Mayer — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 13:44:51 +0000

Next episode: Jimmying the Lock file…

By: Judy

Judy — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 13:36:19 +0000

Anne-Marie I LOVE the idea of the eyes that keep looking to the fly out menus! Clearly you SHOULD be in charge of ID icons!

Thanks for the tip on how to delete those ANNOYING hyperlinks that come in with Word files, the boxes around them drive me insane, usually I end of retyping them or pasting them into a blank file and re pasting them back into my ID file. Lots of busywork. Great tip.