Podcast 040 Transcript

To hear the audio episode from which this transcript was made, or to comment on this episode, go to the InDesignSecrets Podcast 040 page.

[music]

David Blatner: Welcome to InDesign Secrets episode 40. Yes, we made it all the way to 40. This is the first episode of 2007. There is our echo. Thank you, echo machine. I’m David Blatner and I’m here with my wonderful co-host Anne-Marie Concepción.

Anne-Marie Concepción: Hello David and hello everybody. Happy New Year.

David: The InDesign Secrets podcast and also our companion blog at InDesignSecrets.com is the independent resource for all things InDesign.

Anne-Marie: That’s right. And many of you already know that we publish two podcasts: this one and Michael Murphy’s wonderful Videocast TheInDesigner. And, I don’t know David if you have been following them but Michael has been doing a fantastic series on long document publishing with information that you can’t find anywhere else. You know we’re using books, and table of contents, and indices it’s just amazing.

David: I have actually heard from some people, I think some people were posting on the blog as well, that this is the best explanation of how things like table of contents are created. I mean, you can read about it in our books and so on, but when you actually see somebody do it, it just makes it completely clear. And he does a wonderful job making it clear with diagrams and lines. It’s just, it’s terrific. So, definitely check out…

Anne-Marie: To see that Videocast go to InDesignSecrets.com and click on Watch the Videocast, the big link upper left.

David: That’s right. There’s multiple ways you can see that. One is by going there, as Anne-Marie just said, and there’s two links: watch the video cast or listen to the podcast. And you are already listening to the podcast so you have got that down, but Watch the Videocast will take you to the Videocast that Michael does.

The second way to do it is just through iTunes. The free iTunes software, I think that is the easiest way to get them. But, the key there is when you are looking for TheInDesigner, search the music store for TheInDesigner, and it’s one word, TheInDesigner. Then you’ll find it. If you just search for InDesign, for some reason, at least when I checked it didn’t find it. So that was frustrating. TheInDesigner–one word and check out Michael Murphy’s Videocasts, they’re awesome. So, that is a good thing. Coming up on today’s show where it’s a fresh new year so we are going to talk about fresh new InDesign users, specifically what new InDesigners need to know when they start using InDesign. We’ll also discus some of the best resources for all InDesigners, whether you are new or an old maven at this. Great resources that you should have. Also, our Obscure…

Anne-Marie: Wait, wait before…

David: And the Quizzler, we will put in a Quizzler. We’ll talk about last weeks Quizzler and also we are going to give a new Quizzler. And then we are going to end with the Obscure Feature of the Week. Which is Save a Copy, so that will be interesting.

Anne-Marie: Save a Copy. All right, if you remember, let’s talk about the winner of the Quizzler from last time.

David: Yeah.

Anne-Marie: Trumatch has been a sponsor of the show and they have been giving away a set of their Colorfinder Swatchbooks. A Process Color Swatchbooks to the lucky winners of our Quizzlers. Last weeks question, which is the last time that Trumatch has been giving away this Colorfinder, the question was when will three clicks select a whole paragraph instead of a single line. We got a bunch of correct answers and we picked randomly from them and this weeks winner is Trevor Charter from Bothell, Washington.

David: Bothell. Bothell, Washington.

Anne-Marie: Bothell, is that by you?

David: It is, it is sort of down the street from me. It surprised me, there is an InDesign user down the street in Bothell, Washington. There you go.

Anne-Marie: Well, congratulations Trevor, and Trumatch will be sending you the Colorfinder Swatchbooks for you: one coded and one uncoded, a $170 value. Do we have his address or does he need to tell us?

David: We do, we have that. All is well. We will be sending that right out to you. Or having Trumatch send that out to you. They are great Swatchbooks and I encourage everybody else that didn’t will this time to check out those Swatchbooks because they are wonderful whenever you are specing process colors.

What was interesting to me is we had a number of people answer that you could select an entire paragraph by triple clicking when you are in the Story Editor.

Anne-Marie: Yeah, I mean the first one who did we were like ‘yeah, yeah, we are sorry, you are wrong,’ but then we got another one and then another one. So, both Dave and I were like, maybe we missed something.

David: Maybe you can do it in the Story Editor, but as soon as you try it… Yeah, you can’t, you can’t, as far as we can tell.

Anne-Marie: If anybody has the answer to this mystery, I mean, we finally started replying to those people saying, ‘Does it work in your copy of InDesign?’ because not in ours. But we haven’t gotten a reply, so…

David: Well, I’ve actually heard from a couple people who said, ‘No, actually I went and tried it and it didn’t work after all.’ So, it just reminded me that before you send in a Quizzler answer make sure you go try it to see if it works.

Anne-Marie: See if it works.

David: To see if it works and then you can send it in. And we are going to have another Quizzler later on in the show for all of you–new InDesign users and old.

Anne-Marie: That’s right.

David: That you can send it. So it will be an easier one for everybody. OK, so the first thing that we should talk about are what are the top five things that InDesigners need to know when you start using it. Let’s say you are switching from QuarkXPress or Pagemaker or anything. What do you need to know? What’s your favorite thing? What’s your number one thing, Anne-Marie?

Anne-Marie: Well, when I am teaching a new user, whether they are coming from Quark or they have never used a layout program before, the first thing I like the show them other than Create a New Document, is how do you get text on the page. Because people click that big A and they click on the page to start typing and nothing happens.

So, the answer is you have to drag out a text frame with that same tool. Because if somebody is coming from Quark they often think that the Text Frame Tool is that tool next to the Picture Box Tool. You know, that square rectangle that for some reason doesn’t have an A inside it, but that’s how it worked in Quark so that’s how it must work in every layout program in the universe. That’s the Frame Tool. And though you can create an empty frame and click in it with the Type Tool to convert it to a text frame, you are going to end up with a text frame with a one point stroke, because that is the default for the Frame Tool. And besides, it’s too much work. And in InDesign you create text on the page manually by dragging out a frame with the Type Tool…

David: That’s the one with a big T on it. The giant T, the big T, the A is another program. [laughter] The T is the Text Tool and you can simply use that, it’s not just for just clicking inside of already created text frames. You can use that to drag out a frame.

Anne-Marie: That’s right, it’s a double duty tool. And it’s not the Text Tool, Mr. Correctness, it’s the Type Tool.

David: Type Tool, Type Tool. I’m sorry.

Anne-Marie: But it is just a big T No box, no A, just a big T.

David: That said, you can use those other frame tools because frames are just frames. You can put anything inside of any frame. So, you could use the frame tool that has the big X in it and later click on that big X with the Type Tool and it will turn into a text frame.

The other really important thing to mention about InDesign is when you are starting to use it, is the difference between a text frame and a textbox. QuarkXPress users especially are used to talking about these things as textboxes. But, in InDesign they are text frames. And the primary difference between the two, and it is an important difference, the primary difference is when you are talking to other people, like if you go to a party with your colleagues, and you are talking about the, ‘Well I threw a textbox on the page’, they will laugh at you quietly behind your back thinking, ‘Hahaha, QuarkXPress user.’

InDesign users know that the proper term is frame. It’s a text frame in InDesign. Technically in terms of actual use there is no difference at all. But it all has to do with your respect among your peers. Whether you talk about frames or not.

Anne-Marie: And also, your life could depend on it. If you are at an Adobe conference and you happen to say, ‘I put a picture box on the page.’ I believe Adobe employees are allowed to shoot on site.

David: Oh, they are vicious. Vicious, it’s frames, got it?

Anne-Marie: It does actually make a real world difference if you are in online help and you search for textboxes, it’s going to say can’t find anything.

David: That is a good point.

Anne-Marie: You have to search for text frame.

David: Yep, yep, interesting.

Anne-Marie: That is number one, how to get text on the page with text frames. What is the number two top thing that a new InDesign user should know?

David Blatner: I’m going to follow off that one and talk about how to auto-flow your text from page to page. Let’s say, you’re not typing your text in but you want to import text from a Word file or RTF file, whatever. You want to do that from the File menu and you can choose “place” from the File menu.

And when you do that, if you already have a text frame selected it will automatically by default go into that text frame, but if you don’t have something selected, it will load the place cursor, and you can simply click anywhere on your page and it’ll make a frame for you and put the text in it.

But the question I’m always asked, “I’ve got a long story, how do I get that text to flow from one page to the next automatically?” And that’s where the modifier…

Anne-Marie: They have pages if necessary.

David: Right, if they want to add pages or fill up the pages that are there, how do you do that? And it all comes down to the modifier keys. If you shift-click, hold down the shift key, you’ll see that the little place cursor changes to the automatic flow cursor. You shift-click and it will fill all the pages there and it will add pages as necessary until the entire story is added.

So that’s a little trick I find that a lot of people have trouble with when people start using InDesign.

Anne-Marie: That’s right, it’s not a menu command, it’s not in a pallete anywhere, and it’s not a button, it’s just a modifier key that you hold down.

David: There are a lot of those sorts of things in InDesign where I find you hold down a modifier key and the cursor changes slightly. So keep your eye on that cursor because that gives you feedback on what you need to know about what’s about to happen.

Anne-Marie: That’s a good one. So that’s two. I’d say number three for new InDesign users has to do with master pages. Assuming that the person knows what a master page is all about and that they’re using them, which most designers do, the key thing about master pages in InDesign is that it doesn’t work like Quark, and it doesn’t work like Pagemaker; it’s a combination of the two.

In Quark, master page items are completely editable on a document page, just click them, move them around. In Pagemaker they’re completely locked on a document page and if you wanted to edit it you had to hide all the master page items or make another master page or go through a whole bunch of hoops.

In InDesign, master page items are locked by default but you can easily unlock individual master page items on the document page by Command-shift clicking on a Mac right on top of them or Control-shift clicking on top of them on a PC.

David: Right, so it takes it right off the master page and puts it on the document page you can do stuff with.

Anne-Marie: It doesn’t take it off the master page.

David: No, it’s still technically linked to the master page but it lets you do stuff to it.

Anne-Marie: That’s right, you can delete if you want, you can move it around if you want, that’s called “overriding a master page object.” That, I think, is key for new InDesign users to understand.

David: Definitely. Here’s another one: dragging and dropping. I find a lot of people continue to use InDesign the way they used to use QuarkXPress or Pagemaker, this is a big mistake. In order to really get the efficiencies out of InDesign that you hear other people have, you have to start using InDesign differently than you used other programs.

And “drag and drop” is a great example of that. Because if I want four different pictures on my page I don’t have to go and place each one seperately. I simply go to my finder or Windows Explorer, Directory or whatever, and simply select the pictures and I drag them right into InDesign. Just drag them to the page and all four pictures come in. Or four pictures plus three text files.

Anne-Marie: That’s right, not a lot of people know you can do that with text files, just drag and drop a Word document from the desktop onto your InDesign page and it creates a new text frame for you and puts the Word document in there.

David: It’s wonderful. There’s lots of tricks and we’ll be talking about that on InDesignSecrets.com in the blogs for doing different kinds of drag and drop. But just the fact that you can do it is huge, whether it’s from the desktop or from Bridge. You can do it right from Bridge or even from other applications typically. InDesign is very drag and droppable. So that’s a cool thing and can really boost your efficiency.

Anne-Marie: I think your main underlying point there, David, that you need to start using InDesign differently than other layout programs, if that’s what your background was, in order to realize the efficiencies of InDesign. Because I encounter a number of people who say, “Well I’ve tried using InDesign and I just think it’s more difficult than other programs,” or, “It’s not any faster for me.”

And that’s usually because they’re trying to make the program work like another program. So, get to know InDesign a little bit better and leverage its strengths and then you’ll see what other people are so excited about.

David: Absolutely.

Anne-Marie: So we’ve done four: text frames, drag and drop, text flow, master page items, so number five?

David: Yes, let’s just sneak one more in here.

Anne-Marie: I would have to say, what is the difference between the selection and the direct selection?

David: Yeah, that black arrow/white arrow thing.

Anne-Marie: That’s right. And I’d say for new users, 90% of the time you’re using the black arrow tool, the selection tool. That’s what you use to move things around to resize things.

David: It’s the same thing as the “item tool” on QuarkXPress–the “pointy thingy tool.”

Anne-Marie: Or the “layer move tool” in Photoshop.

David: Yes, basically the same thing.

Anne-Marie: The direct selection arrow, the white arrow is used primarily when you need to move a picture around inside of its frame.

David: And this is one of those things that Illustrator users get immediately, but those of us who aren’t primarily Illustrator users, we’re constantly confused by that.

Anne-Marie: Well no, wait a minute. Illustrator users are seldom moving pictures around inside frames.

David: No, I’m sorry, but just the issues around the direct select tool, what the direct select tool is and so on, that’s the part that confuses people, that’s what’s different for QuarkXPress users.

Anne-Marie: Yeah, QuarkXPress users use the content tool, the little hand, but you’ll see if you hover and select the picture with the direct selection tool in InDesign, you’ll also get the little hand. So from that point on they work basically the same. And what’s similar with Illustrator is that the direct selection tool is also used to edit individual points on any kind of frame or shape as opposed to resizing the entire shape.

David: The big question I’m constantly asked from new users is, “How do I get a picture out of this frame and put it into that frame?”

Anne-Marie: Oh, yeah, I have that a lot too.

David: And if you select it with a black arrow, that is the selection tool, and cut it, you’re cutting the entire frame and the picture inside of it. You have to click on it with the white arrow, the direct select too, and then cut the picture out, not the frame but the just the picture within the frame, and paste that into the other frame.

And in order to that you have to select the other frame and choose “Edit, Paste into.” Because you’re pasting into another frame, not pasting by itself. If you just choose “Paste” it’s going to make a new frame for that picture and put it into that. So that’s a little crazy making.

By the way, if you are familiar with Pagemaker or QuarkXPress and you want sort of a hybrid tool, underneat the direct select too–and we’ve talked that in other episodes–is the “position tool.” And the positon tool sort of acts more like the tools in Pagemaker and QuarkXPress I find. You can actually move pictures around inside of a frame and change the cropping in one go instead of having to…

Anne-Marie: That’s right, you can edit the frame shape and move the picture around inside of the frame itself.

David: All right, well there are many more things that I think people need to know when they start using InDesign but let’s move onto some of the resources, where they could find more of that information. Because I think there are so many resources out there right now.

Of course at InDesignSecrets.com there is lots of information there, we’re constantly updating that from all of our contributors like Steve Werner, and Sandee Cohen, Claudia McCue, and Pria Burque are posting all kinds of good stuff about InDesign but there are many other resources out there as well, so let’s talk a little about that.

Anne-Marie: The people might say, “What’s a good book for InDesign?”

David: I’ll say for me the recommendation I always give is if you’re new to InDesign, you just have to have Sandee Cohen’s, “Visual Quickstart Guide.” I mean if you’re just going to start off the bat, you get InDesign and you just want to get up to speed quickly, get Visual Quickstart Guide for InDesign from Peachpit Press. That will get you through the first month of really getting up speed.

Anne-Marie: That’s right. Those visual quickstart guides, every spread says here’s one topic, how do I do this one thing, and it has step by step with pictures and then there’s notes and tips as part of the spread. It’s just one topic, focus on it, and one spread. That’s what those visual quickstart books are all about, I love them.

David: Now once you start using it for a while, once you start using InDesign, you’re going to find you’re going to need to go deeper than what the Visual Quickstart Guide will help.

Anne-Marie: You need a reference book.

David: Yeah, you need a big reference book and granted, I’m completely biased, but I would recommend…

Anne-Marie: But everyone agrees, the one that people should get is, “Real World InDesign,” by David and Olav Kvern. That’s the 900-pound monster that every experienced InDesign user keeps next to their computer with post-its sticking out it. Like if I get a question from a user about using XML and I can flip open to that chapter. There’s a huge chapter on XML. How to use it to you know, coming into InDesign, leaving InDesign or any obscure little feature is well covered within the book. That’s like the encyclopedia of InDesign. Right there.

David Blatner: And once you start using InDesign for a while beyond that you are going to find that there are just weird quarks. Why does it work like this? You are going to run into these roadblocks and frustrations. That’s when I really encourage you to get the book that Anne-Marie and I wrote called ‘InDesign Breakthroughs’ and its officially Adobe InDesign CS/CS2 Breakthroughs. And its basically, its like a frequently asked questions.

It’s you know, here’s the problem, here’s the solution and we know the problem because we hear about them all the time. And we have listed out all the solutions. So many of the ‘P’ things people email us, how did you do that? Why did you do this? Why isn’t InDesign doing such and such? We have already talked about that.

Anne-Marie: You are tempted to say just go to page 36, there is a big screen chart on the side bar all about…

David: Right.

Anne-Marie: Specific question.

David: So, you know we don’t want this to be a huge commercial plug but we do want to tell you that lot of these answers are already there in ‘InDesign Breakthroughs’. So definitely take a look at that. There are lots of other resources as well including a magazine, many people don’t know about InDesign magazines still.

Anne-Marie: Right.

David: InDesign magazine is a PDF magazine. So you don’t have to download it off the web. There is a great discount on the subscription cost by being an InDesign Secrets listener and we will repeat that. Go to the show notes, if you go to InDesignSecrets.com and we are going to have links to all of these resources on the website. And will tell you what that code is and you can get a great discount for InDesign magazine and it’s just shock full of information.

Anne-Marie: It is amazing, the level of content. I mean, first saw these magazines they are often like 60 to 80 pages, right.

David: Yeah, Yeah.

Anne-Marie: Or sometimes longer. And then in depth articles on like you know, using tables that will go far beyond anything written even in your books David, even in our books, even in the online help. About like how do you use tables for things that aren’t tables? Or how do you use them? I remember was it Pryo, who wrote that huge article on using Acre Graphics.

David: Yes, that’s was terrific.

Anne-Marie: Oh! My gosh! I learnt so much from that one article that it’s just amazing. I love that magazine.

David: And like the tables, one that you mentioned Diane Burns writes regularly for it.

Anne-Marie: Yes.

David: Lots of writers, Branislav Milic, they are just great, a great wealth of information that comes together in InDesign Magazine. So definitely take a look at that. They also have a free tip of the week by the way, if you go to indesignmag.com that’s the URL for them, indesignmag.com. You can sign up for a free tip of the week and that’s kind of fun because it just shows up in your email box and you know learn something new. So that’s pretty cool.

Anne-Marie: One of my favorite resources.

David: Yeah.

Anne-Marie: Is, our online resources where you could get user to use your help.

David: Yeah.

Anne-Marie: Very often, you know something is not working and you answer right away and I’ll jut post a message to a form or list serve that says I can’t get the table of contents to work across you know, multiple books and multiple chapters in a book. And by sending one message to the list everybody gets a copy of that message and anybody who wants to reply sends the reply to the same email address.

And everybody who subscribes to the list gets a copy of the reply. So its an on going, like a party line kind of conversation where you will often give replies from eight or ten people from around the world, like the head of creative at Macy’s or the guy who works on you know Continas Publications in New York City or people from Germany and Australia. There are authors and sometimes Adobe employees and consultants and just regular you know, prepress people, designers who are all helping each other and have been where you are. And I love these kinds of resources.

So the main list for InDesign, is the Blue World list. It’s called InDesign Talk and we will have a link to that on our web site. And then also on the Adobe site, if you go to community and then choose forms you see that there are user-to-user forms for every single product and often multiple forms for the same product. Like for InDesign, there is one for InDesign Mac, InDesign Windows and InDesign Scripting.

David: Yeah.

Anne-Marie: The forms, I think are kind of pain because you can post a question and then you have to keep going to the forum to see if anybody has answered. But you can subscribe to the forum.

David: Yeah, definitely.

Anne-Marie: And you have all post and answers emailed to you. As long as you know in your email program, how to set up the filter or rule, so that you have a specific mailbox for InDesign list server or InDesign for messages, then this stuff won’t crowd your mailbox. You don’t have to read them as they come in. Just you know let it go ahead and filter that mailbox and when you have a minute, you can read what people have been talking about.

That’s a great way to learn about topics you didn’t even knew you had a question about plus once you subscribe the mail, the net resources right there for you as a ready help, you know you can quickly send off an email and get a reply within minutes.

David: I totally agree. Those are just excellent resources. Another resource is the user groups, InDesign user groups, which have cropped up all over the world now, in Sydney and I think they have started to show up in Europe, certainly across North America. The user groups are terrific resources and its just so exiting to go to these meetings and you know the excitement, the amount of information that’s being passed back and forth between users is just excellent. It’s just a great way to learn, if you are not…

Anne-Marie: You are networked too. Great way to network.

David: It’s an excellent way to network. You know, I need a job, I had a job whatever I need InDesign user.

Anne-Marie: We are looking for a freelancer.

David: Exactly, it’s really terrific. If you not knew one of these, you can still get a lot of great information by going to the website. The InDesign user group website that Chris Converse put together. And so will have a link to that as well from InDesign.

Anne-Marie: Right, because you can read, what all the meetings have been about you. You can often download notes from the meetings, see pictures, and get links to resources, talked about during the meeting. So you know like I was on there and I saw that Seattle InDesign user group is talking about a particular topic. Last June, when I was you know, needed information on like perfect its right here.

David: Yeah, So it’s cool.

Anne-Marie: Really, even if you don’t go to the meetings, it’s a great website.

David: Another resource, you know we are not going to be able to cover everything, all the resources that are out there because it is too much. But another one of the great resources is the videos at lynda.com. And I want to mention those specifically because lynda.com just gave all InDesign Secrets listeners and readers a special code that you can go and you can get a free one weeks subscription, which just kind of blew my mind because for the entire week you can sit and just fill your eye balls with free videos and they are really good videos. They have got like 15,000 videos…

Anne-Marie: And all on different programs not just the Adobe programs but Macromedia and Microsoft and all kind of…

David: How do you use Windows XP stuff? How do you use Excel or whatever you want?

Anne-Marie: These are sort quick time videos that open up and if you subscribe after the seven-day trial you can also download the companion files that follow along.

David: Yeah.

Anne-Marie: The videos are usually like three minutes to ten or fifteen minutes and you hear the guy talking. You see his screen…

David: Or her.

Anne-Marie: Or her. And you see the menu items being pull down and it’s like having your own personal tutor, right there. And you can rewind if you don’t understand something or watch it again. It’s just a great way to learn. I love online video training.

David: This is part of the– Emory and I are both starting to do some videos for lynda.com, which is going to fun. But right now you won’t be able to find our videos up there yet but you will be able to find lots of other video up there. So its free week and of course, you know lynda.com is hoping that you are going to fall in love with that and sign up as a regular subscriber. But…

Anne-Marie: You know, even such a deal I was talking about this yesterday to a training client that you go there with 30 bucks that’s how much you cost to sign up per month?

David: I thought those were 25.

Anne-Marie: It costs 30, if you want the files.

David: Oh! Oh, Yeah. OK.

Anne-Marie: For a month, you get access to the entire library of online training and you can cancel it for a month if you want you don’t have to renew every months. So it is a wonderful deal.

David: It is.

Anne-Marie: Yeah, you can also purchase the video training and a CD or DVD. They are like $99 per program usually, you know I think you might get better quality videos, I am not sure, but I just like the online one’s are perfectly fine.

David: Oh! Yeah.

Anne-Marie: And that’s lynda.com.

David: Right, well we will have a link and in the show notes we will tell you how to get that free one week subscription as well, which is and there is no you know you don’t even have to give them a credit card upfront. You just sign up. It just works. It’s really amazing.

Anne-Marie: I want to say that we don’t want to be too biased because there is another online training video source that I like as well as lynda.com is vtc.com.

David: Yeah, absolutely.

Anne-Marie: vtc.com, Virtual Training Company dot com and these people also have a huge library of titles including older ones for Adobe. I don’t think they are as quiet up to date with the current versions of the Adobe and MacroMedia Sweep but I do know for sure that they have a CS2 training videos for most of the Adobe Sweep.

And those are also very good. Both Lynda, though they don’t have a seven-day free trial, every title does have ten or twenty sample videos that you can listen to, to see if you have those as well.

David: Oh, great, great. OK. Also, one other…

Anne-Marie: The last one.

David: The last resource that we should mention is our poster, the Keyboard Shortcuts Poster. We are very into keyboard shortcuts and that’s…

Anne-Marie: Yeah, we haven’t talked about that.

David: I really believe that learning the keyboard shortcuts for InDesign is one of the best ways for you to get really productive and efficient with this program. So we created…

Anne-Marie: And the posters are a fun way to do that.

David: Absolutely. We created this huge poster, it’s double sided–Windows on one side and Mac on the other side. And, you can buy it directed from InDesignSecrets.com. You can get a 25% discount until the end of March. So, buy now, 25% off by using the word ‘feather.’ And we will put that in the show notes as well. That is the coupon code for getting 25% off that poster. So, take a look at that, hopefully you will like that, and buy one for all your friends. That helps.

Anne-Marie: It’s not expensive either. It is $15 before the discount. And if you get two or more it goes way down in price.

David: Yeah, big discounts.

Anne-Marie: We have had people who bought nine or ten, because I guess they are getting one for every designer on staff or something like that.

David: Yeah, absolutely. Just put them on the wall next to the designers and make them more efficient.

Anne-Marie: And we sell them anywhere, so if you are in the U.S. they’ll go out by priority mail. And if you are outside the U.S. they will go out by airmail folded. The ones in the U.S. go out rolled and in tubes. So, we have had people order from Australia, Germany, and Saudi Arabia.

David: Good comments back from those users, and honestly that helps support what we are doing. These are free podcasts and one of the ways we are trying to support that, continue doing these podcasts, is by selling this poster. To be honest, that’s part of what we are doing. Hey, let’s give away a poster. Let’s give away a free poster.

Anne-Marie: Yeah, let’s give away a poster for this Quizzler.

David: For the Quizzler, OK.

Anne-Marie: OK. And this one is especially aimed at new users, of course it is open to anybody, but this is one that we think even new users will be able to take a stab at. And here it is–a lot of users are unaware that you can open up type related palates from two places in a design. All the palates in InDesign are available under the Window menu, and at the very body of that Window menu, you’ll see a fly out for type and tables that lists all the individual type related and table related palates. But all the type related palates are also available, or almost all, under the Type menu. So, you see some palates related to type under the type menu. So, a little convenience for opening up those kind of palates since you work with them so often.

However, here is the Quizzler, we need you to name two type related palates that do appear in the Window menu but don’t appear in the Type menu. We are going to make you actually open up the palates and look. Open up the menus and look.

David: That’s right.

Anne-Marie: So name two type related palates that appear in the Window menu that don’t appear in the Type menu, and email us the names of those palates. Email it to info @ InDesignSecrets.com. And, we need to get your answer by when?

David: Let’s say, end of day on Friday, January 12th. Let’s do that, about a week from now, Friday, January 12th. Send us your answer by midnight on the 12th, and make sure you put the word Quizzler in the subject line. So, info @ InDesignSecrets.com and put ‘Quizzler Answer’ or whatever you want. Put it in the subject.

Anne-Marie: Don’t answer in the comments, as usual, only by email. And I have a feeling we are going to get I’d say a few thousand responses.

David: That’s great. And we will pick a random winner from that. And, that winner will win a copy of the InDesign Secrets Keyboard Shortcuts Poster. I hope you enjoy that. Let’s do the Obscure InDesign Feature of the Week.

Anne-Marie: all right. What is the Obscure InDesign Feature of the Week? It is Save a Copy.

David: It is a feature that shows up in the File menu but almost nobody notices it for some reason. You know, they look at Save, and Save As, but they don’t think of Save a Copy.

Anne-Marie: So lonely there, sitting above Revert.

David: Yeah.

Anne-Marie: What’s it for?

David: Save a Copy saves the current state of your document off onto your hard drive without changing your current document. It’s like saving a base camp. If you are working alone and you kind of like the way this looks but you want to make a few more changes, save a copy of it off to the desktop, or off to your hard drive, and then keep working on it. And you can always go back to that save a copy or you could delete the version you… That is one way you could use it.

Here how I used it about a year, I just want to tell this quick story here. About a few ago I was working on a document and I opened a document that I already created, and I was going to make a bunch of changes to it. This is typically how I work. It’s not really a template file but it is something that I already created and I’m going to modify it to something else. So, I’m working on it, I’m working on it, I’m working on it, and about a half hour later I go to Control-A because Control-A or Command-A is select all, right? But the unfortunate thing about the letter A on our keyboard is it is right next to another letter which is S.

Anne-Marie: Q.

David: S. It’s true, Q would do it too but S is the dangerous one because Command-S does something very different than Command-A. Command-S does what? Saves the document. And so I hit Command-S accidentally and I saved over my original document, which really, really sucked.

So, I was very unhappy about that, and it suddenly hit me, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, InDesign has unlimited undoes. And unlimited really means unlimited as far as I can tell. I’ve never hit a limit on it and I really put it to the test this time because I used Save a Copy to save the current version that I had been working on to the disk, I said File Save a Copy, save that off to disk. But that didn’t change the version of the file that I was actually working on. All of my undoes were still there. And so I…

Anne-Marie: Right, because you can go back before a save.

David: Yeah, exactly. So I just started doing Command-Z, Command-Z, Command-Z, Command-Z, Control-Z, Control-Z, kept going back farther and farther. I must have hit it 150 times all the way back…

Anne-Marie: You didn’t want to hit Revert.

David: Well, there was no Revert because…

Anne-Marie: Well no, you know if you did Revert you would end up at that save because you pressed Command-S.

David: Oh, that’s what it was, that’s what it was, because I had done Command-S. I couldn’t use Revert because that would have brought me back to the save, which I had just done, so that wasn’t useful. So, instead I did a Command-S, Command-Z undo and I just kept undoing until undo didn’t do anything anymore, which the file was then at the original state that I opened it.

Anne-Marie: When you first opened it.

David: Then I did a Command-S to save that, so I knew that was back to the original. Then I could close that and open the file I had saved using Save a Copy.

Anne-Marie: So if somebody accidentally chooses Save instead of for example Save As, what they should immediately do is choose Save a Copy and undo, undo, undo.

David: That’s certainly one option. Another option is to just start from scratch to begin with, or to throw yourself out a window, that also works.

Anne-Marie: Right, right, that is very cool. You know, I never though of Save a Copy like that to save iteration of something without having to use Save As. That is very cool, I like that.

David: So, that is this week’s Obscure InDesign Feature of the Week.

Anne-Marie: So, that’s it for episode numeral 40. We encourage you to go to InDesignSecrets.com and post what you think is the most important things that new users need to know when moving to InDesign.

David: We talked about five of them. What do you think are the most important things?

Anne-Marie: Yeah, or you can also call in and comment if you’d like, you can dial 1-206-888-INDY and leave a voice comment or email us at info @ InDesignSecrets.com. But, yeah, for this episode in particular we are encouraging the experienced InDesign users to post a comment saying what they think new InDesign users should know.

David: That would be terrific.

Anne-Marie: In addition to what we talked about. All right.

David: Well, this has been fun, but until we meet again, this is David Blatner.

Anne-Marie: And Anne-Marie Concepción.

David: For InDesign Secrets.

[music]

To hear the audio episode from which this transcript was made, or to comment on this episode, go to the InDesignSecrets Podcast 040 page.