*Click* *Click*… for Victory!
InDesign is a huge program with a zillion menu items and features and at times all this complexity and power can feel a bit daunting, but woven into InDesign are little patterns of efficiency and predictability that help you control this rampaging stallion of a design program. One of these little patterns has to do with the power of the double click.
InDesign isn’t hard to control once you find the reins
You may have noticed that double clicking when you have the Selection Tool active does slightly different things in different situations, but what ties all these slightly different behaviors together is that they all let you select deeper.
“Select deeper?”, you say, “I’m intrigued. Tell me more…”
OK, I will!
(Note: Everything that follows only applies when you have the Selection Tool active.)
Click click! on a text frame and the tool automatically changes to the Type Tool and puts the text insertion into the text where you clicked.
Feel like typing? Why thank you, don’t mind if I do!
Click click! on a Placed image and now you have just the image inside the frame selected and you can move it, resize it, rotate it, do whatever you want . The same goes for when you have InDesign objects Pasted Inside other InDesign objects. TIP: If the Content Grabber/Doughnut has been causing you grief by making it too easy to accidentally select images inside the frame, feel free to turn it off (View>Extras>Hide Content Grabber).
Greater control over your Placed images is just a double-click away
Click click! on an item in a group and it selects the actual item you clicked on instead of the entire group. Sweet!
Release your inner badger by burrowing effortlessly into groups
Click click! on a Master Page item from a non-Master Page and… it does nothing. Dang it. Well, OK, double-clicking doesn’t work absolutely everywhere. To select a Master Page item from a non-Master Page you need to Command+Shift+click (Control+Shift+click on Windows).
There are many other small details about what double-clicking does in other situations (inside nested groups*, for example) but if you just remember that click click! with the Selection Tool lets you select deeper you should be working more quickly and more efficiently in no time.
*OK, fine, if you really want to know: if you have nested groups (groups inside of groups) you can keep double-clicking deeper and deeper into the hierarchy. Once you reach the bottommost level of the nested groups double-clicking will take you back up a level, as will double-clicking on the dashed group bounding box.
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This was great! I often check to see what’s happening in ID Secrets at the beginning of the day and wouldn’t you know, I used the double click to select objects from groups a number of times shortly after reading your post and it saved me time and frustration.
“Once you reach the bottommost level of the nested groups double-clicking will take you back up a level”
Okay now THAT I did NOT know! Another victory for the capricious double-click… thanks, Ashley! :o)
all that double clicking made me suffer from RSI…
“Click click! on a text frame and the tool automatically changes to the Type Tool and puts the text insertion into the text where you clicked.”
So. Anyone know how to turn this feature OFF?
de Fer,
You can turn off the ability to that causes the Text Tool to convert non-text frames into text frames when you click on them (Preferences>Type>Type Tool Converts Frames to Text Frames) but I could not find anywhere inside InDesign to turn off the Selection Tool automatically turning into the Text tool when you double click on a text frame.
However, if you ever find yourself with a text insertion when you what you really wanted was to just select the text frame, just press the Esc key (one of the Selection Tools default keyboard shortcuts) and you will automatically switch back to the Selection Tool and the text frame that had the text insertion will now be selected.