The Not-So-Ultimate Guide to Translating QuarkXPress Terms to InDesign Terms

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Looking for help moving from QuarkXPress? Don’t hit F1.

It’s no secret that many InDesign users are QuarkXPress converts; more and more of them every day. There are plenty of books and training videos that make the transition as easy as possible but sadly, the one area that lacks much in the way of help is InDesign’s own online help files.

While the documentation itself is very good, a search for the terms familiar to Quark users will either turn up empty or return information totally unrelated to what the users is looking for. The reason for that is that Adobe has left out the terminology that a Quark user would enter. A perfect example would be the word “link.”

A Quark user entering that term would be looking for the procedure to thread text frames but would get information on linking to external files for graphics and text.

And so, as a service to those QuarkXPress users looking to make that jump to InDesign, we present some of the more common terms and tool names that you might find helpful. The Quark term is first followed by its InDesign equivalent. Most are self-explanatory but notes have been included where appropriate.

(This list isn’t comprehensive and was compiled and edited by myself, Anne-Marie, and David. Feel free to add more of your own in the comments below.)

*Note that Anne-Marie and David always refer to XPress’s Content tool as “Mr. Spanky” for obvious reasons when you look closely at it’s icon.

For further information, you can refer to this conversion guide published by Adobe or look around for a copy of Moving to InDesign. Though written for CS much of the content still holds true.