Making Snippets Remember Their Location
Snippets are a great way to save pieces of your pages to re-use later. (If you don’t recall what snippets are or how to use them, check out this post.) Well, a while back I wrote a post about how you can choose whether a snippet file will end up in the same page location as it was originally (when it was created). Basically, the position of a placed snippet depends on the Snippet Import setting in the File Handling pane of the Preferences dialog box: You can choose between Position at Cursor Location (wherever you drop it or click to Place it), or Position at Original Location (which remembers where it was on the page when you originally made it).
But there is one more tip that I recently learned that ensures that a snippet always remembers its location: Lock the object (or objects) using Object > Lock Position before you export the snippet file.
It’s simple, it’s elegant, and I don’t know why I never thought of it before.
Actually, there’s one instance where this won’t work: If you Place the snippet into a text frame as an anchored object (yes, you can do that in CS4), it loses its position. But in most cases, the lock trick works great.
 |
Great efficiency tip. I think there’s also a bug in both CS3 and CS4 that Snippet Import preference from sticking when you set it to Position at Original Location. It will reset to Position at Cursor Location every time you restart InDesign. At least that’s how it behaves in both apps for me.
As I just was testing your method I found an easier way to accomplish the same: Hold down Option while you drag the snippet onto the artboard – that makes it remember the position though “Position at Cursor Location” is chosen in Preferences!
Furthermore it works the other way round: Choose “Position at Original Location” and hold down Option while you drag: The snippet is placed at the Cursor Position!
@endirico: Thanks for mentioning that; that was in the other blog post I mentioned at the top, but it’s good for people to be reminded, as not everyone follows all the links.