Comments on: Things You Can’t Do in InDesign

By: Salieri

Salieri — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 20:35:42 +0000

When I have to move back to Quark for something I always groan, but there are little things in it that still make me smile. For instance Quark highlights to you if there are missing links in your doc at export stage, then lets you go and relink them – whereas ID just dumps you back out to the layout and you have to go and relink them the long way before exporting again. Not a ‘feature’ per se, but a welcome little tickle.

By: Tom

Tom — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 13:23:28 +0000

the answer for the request of importing pdf annotations into indesign:

http://www.dtptools.com/product.asp?id=anid

By: LGFN1

LGFN1 — Wed, 04 May 2011 16:09:58 +0000

Beautiful article!
Now it’s time to add [CS5] to a few of these…

By: Tiago Cheregati

Tiago Cheregati — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 21:20:21 +0000

It would be really nice too if InDesign could let us “Enable All ICC Profiles” for the images on a previously saved document, without having to check “Ask when opening” on the “Color Settings”.
Today, either you do that or you have to go right-clicking image by image. Really annoying.

That is particularly useful when you have to make a PDF/X-4 file with all the ICC profiles into each image, in a controlled color management workflow.

Hope Adobe will do something about that in CS6…

By: Anne-Marie Concepcion

Anne-Marie Concepcion — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 22:39:44 +0000

1) is possible, just don’t enter anything into the Find What and Change To fields. Click the More Info button there to reveal the Find Formatting and Change Formatting controls … far more robust and easier to use than Word’s.

(2) and (3) are not possible in ID. I’d love to see those features.

(4) is possible with the Eyedropper tool, that’s exactly what it’s for.

By: Wendy Hersh

Wendy Hersh — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 17:00:01 +0000

There are things I know to do in WORD but don’t see how to do in InDesign (!). I know I have large gaps in my knoweldge, and would be grateful if someone could tell me if and how these are possible. I’m using CS2 on a PC.

(1) Select all copy based on its formatting (for example, everything with a particular character style and a particular paragraph style). In WORD I use Search and Replace. Tried that here–didn’t work. I think InDesign wanted to search for actual words. Once I select, I want to apply a new paragraph style to everything at once. Doable? How? I do not want to redefine existing styles.

(2) Select multiple instances of text, both within the same text box and/or in separate text boxes. (CTRL + mouse does that in WORD).

(3) Repeat the last formatting change I made in one place to something else. (CTRL + Y in Word)

(4) Pick up a formatting info and apply elsewhere (like Format Painter in Word).

I really can’t believe these things would not be possible in InDesign. Are they really?

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 13:25:04 +0000

@Leslie & Jongware: Yes! See http://indesignsecrets.com/select-text-all-the-way-to-the-end.php

By: Jongware

Jongware — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 11:30:47 +0000

Shift+(Ctrl/Cmd)+End selects everything to the end of the story from your current cursor position …

By: Leslie

Leslie — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 05:51:38 +0000

There’s one thing that Quark did that I start to automatically try in InDesign and only just stop myself from doing a nano-second before I push the keys. It used to be that if you selected modifier keys (I think they were command, option, and shift) and the down-arrow key, you could select all of the remaining text in a story from where your cursor was placed. I loved this because it meant that if you had overflow because you accidentally pasted something in twice, or because the original text had too many paragraph returns at the end, you could instantly delete all of the text without have to drag or scroll around to find it.

Am I correct in thinking that a way of doing this is still not available in InDesign?

By: Jongware

Jongware — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 23:11:11 +0000

Heh heh. A cover with a spine, nope. You can’t do that with InDesign — or any other application for that matter.

Not for an e-book.