Comments on: Master Text Frame, What’s the Point?

By: Barb

Barb — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 19:52:52 +0000

Thanks for the suggestions.

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 16:00:23 +0000

@Barb: When you place the PDF, choose Show Import Options. Then turn off the Transparent Background checkbox. That way they should come in opaque, no?

By: James Fritz

James Fritz — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 13:57:14 +0000

@Barb

I am not aware of a way to automatically have master text frames have a attribute applied when you create a document. However, if you created an object style with the attributes that you need and load it into InDesign with no documents open. Now you can just apply the object style to all of the frames that you create and use.

Another option would be to make a series of templates with all of the sizes that you need. In each of the templates, have the correct object style applied to each frame to prevent you from missing any.

Regarding the transparent PDF issue. Why not just but a paper filled frame on a background layer of each document to prevent anything from being transparent?

By: Barb

Barb — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 14:25:24 +0000

We’re a newspaper publisher. All the designers use master text frames when designing advertising. We make a new document based on the ad we’re working on (eg. 3 col x 56agates). Then click on the master text frame and apply a stoke (usually 2 point).
My question: Is there a way to automatically have the master text frame have a fill of white and not be transparent? In our page layout the placeholders where the ads automatically pop in have a separate text box which contain all the info for that particular ad (eg. ad size, ad number, colour requirements, etc.). When the actual ad is imported the info box can be seen behind and so it also prints. We have to manually give each ad box a fill of white (to cover up the ad info). We’ve missed a few boxes a few times and needless to say the advertiser wasn’t too happy to have some gobbledy-gook in his ad – go figure!)

Oh, the ads that are imported are exported from InDesign as pdfs. I thought maybe we could make the pdfs non-transparent but I don’t think that’s possible except for using PDF optimizer, and time-wise we can’t do that for every ad.

Barb

By: Harbs

Harbs — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 11:28:08 +0000

The point of using Master Page Text Frames is here:
http://indesignsecrets.com/pr-in-tools-releases-autoflow-pro-plug-in.php

Harbs

By: Ellis Humphres

Ellis Humphres — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:24:43 +0000

We have a template driven workflow where a single page document might end up being an 8 page set of labels, or as many as 120… sometimes more. It varies every time. With a master text frame, I begin with provided data in Excel, and I can flow a text snippet into a specific location, with specific formatting without having to setup a 200 page document with pre threaded frames and remove pages later. It would be great if we could specify master frames after a doc has been created, but we have to live with the limitation.

By: Tom

Tom — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 14:06:12 +0000

Crud, never mind. Data merge picks up the margins from your master text frame, but you can override them. I missed that somehow. So…. Data merge does not need master text frames either.

By: Tom

Tom — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 13:47:08 +0000

I am a total novice as I have only been using InDesign for a couple weeks, but I have been using the Data Merge feature, and for that, unless I am mistaken you need to use master frames. It places the created text frames within the bounds of the master frame. It seems to ignore any other existing frame, but I have to admit I have not yet tried it on a document without master frames.

By: Eugene

Eugene — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 13:53:27 +0000

Ah ha… I knew I wasn’t insane.

Ok, could be true for just placing a text frame on the master. But here’s what I did.

I went to New Document>Facing Pages>Master Text Frame.

Then I input my text on all the necessary pages.

Decided I wanted to reduce the margins, but I don’t want to have to actually grab the handles of the text frame on the master pages to do this.

I simply went to Layout>Layout Adjstment and enabled it.

Now when I change the margins settings on the master pages all the text frames move accordingly.

I only did it with one document, perhaps I should have tested it twice before posting. But I didn’t, I tested it once and rushed here to jot it down.

*important – you need to select both master pages (or all your master pages) and then change the margin and columns, you don’t even have to visit the pages, just highlight them in the Pages Panel.

Floating images only move up and down with the margins – they won’t go left and right.

But low and behold the text frames change by themselves to suit the size of the margins.

Now I just tried importing text into a document by manually setting up text frames on the master page and it just wasn’t the same, because I had to visit the master page to set them.

By: MarcusStringer

MarcusStringer — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 04:33:05 +0000

I didn’t read all the comments so I may be reposting but…

You can’t set your Text frames globaly to be justified, unless they are in the Master Text Frame.

When you import your text using the direct selection tool with the loaded curser the text frame it creates are set to align top.

If you set up you master pages with text frames you can them adjust them to be align justified.

so when you simply unlock the Text frame on the first page and bring in your text via the type tool then the following pages become justified…

In CS3 anyway….