Palettes to Toolbars and Vice Versa

Anne-Marie Concepcion

4

Microsoft Office is a toolbar-centric set of programs. Adobe Creative Suite has a palette-cenric philosophy.

And InCopy is a mash-up of the two. It’s an Adobe Creative Suite program designed to appeal to editors most familiar with Microsoft Word. That’s why it has horizontal toolbars at the top and the bottom along with the usual side palettes at the right.

You’ve probably already discovered various ways to rearrange the palettes … converting the side ones to floating palettes, opening new palettes from the Window menu, docking palettes on the left side as well as the right, saving palette arrangements as Workspaces, and so on.

Did you know that you can also convert the toolbars to palettes, and the palettes to toolbars? It’s a feature uniquely InCopy.

Toolbars to Palettes

To turn a toolbar into a floating palette, press and drag on its “grab bar” — a tiny, rectangular vertical strip at the left end of it. In CS2 the grab bar looks like it’s textured, in CS3 it’s a flat, dark grey color. As you drag the toolbar over your main window area you’ll see its outline appear. Release the mouse button and voila, it’s a palette.

Some of the toolbars look quite different when they’re a palette — try it with the CopyFit toolbar to see what I mean. These types sprout a Close box and can be docked to the sides of the monitor just like the other palettes.

Other toolbars aren’t so flexible, such as the Command Bar (the one with icons for Open, Save, Print, etc.). These can float, so you can drag them around the screen and tuck them into a corner or something; but they can’t be collapsed into side palettes. To close them completely, choose their name from the Window menu. (And choose it again to re-open it.)

Rearranging Toolbars

All toolbars, though, can be relocated to either the top or the bottom of the screen. You can even change their order (maybe you’d like the Track Changes toolbar at the far left?), and add additional toolbar rows.

To do any of this, just drag from their grab bar and drop them where you want them in their new toolbar position. They pop right in like they’ve lived there for years.

You can drop them anywhere in the toolbar area — to the left or right of another toolbar, into the empty gray area, or directly above or below an existing toolbar, if you want to make multiple toolbar rows a la Microsoft Word.

Palettes to Toolbars

To turn a palette, like the Paragraph Styles palette, into a toolbar, hold your mouse button down on its “sensitive area” and drag and drop it on the top or bottom toolbar well. In CS2 the sensitive area of a palette is its tab, the tab containing the name of the palette. In CS3 you can drag the tab or title bar at the top of the palette (err, panel).

Not every palette can be turned into a toolbar. The Table palette, for example, will just sit there overlapping the toolbar when you drop it, no matter how gently you drag its sensitive area. (ahem.)

The ones that convert with aplomb are Paragraph, Paragraph Styles (very cool to have a dropdown or pop-up list of styles in the toolbar!), Character, Character Styles, Swatches, and Change Info.

To turn them back into palettes, drag from their grab bar at the far left and drop them anywhere in the main window area.

Save Your Work

When you’re done rearranging the furniture, remember that you can save your new look by choosing Window > Workspaces > Save Workspace. That way you can always recall it instantly, even if someone deletes your InCopy preferences (often a first troubleshooting step). Workspaces aren’t deleted when preferences are rebuilt, but the palettes are reset to their default positions. Choose Window > Workspace > [name of your workspace] to get it back the to way you want it.