Tip of the Week: Taking Control of Guides

Mike Rankin

4

This tip was sent to Tip of the Week email subscribers on March 31, 2016.

Sign up now and every week you’ll get a new InDesign Tip of the Week and Keyboard Shortcut of the Week, along with roundups of new articles at InDesignSecrets, plus exclusive deals sent right to your Inbox!

Just scroll all the way down to the bottom of this page, enter your email address, and click Go! We’ll take care of the rest. Now, on with the tip!

You probably know that to create a guide in InDesign you can just drag one out from the ruler (hold Shift to make the guide snap to the ruler’s tick marks).

But did you know that you can create a new guide by duplicating an existing one? Just select the guide, hold the Alt/Option key, and then drag.

You can also use the Step and Repeat feature with guides. Select a guide and choose Edit > Step and Repeat, and enter the desired vertical or horizontal Offset value.

You can use Distribute too. With multiple guides selected, use the Align and Distribute controls in the Control panel or the Align panel.

Furthermore, you can change the color of guides by selecting them and choosing Layout > Ruler Guides. Then pick a color from the list in the dialog box.

And finally, if you want to change a horizontal guide into a vertical one as you drag it from the ruler, hold the Alt/Option key.