Top 10 Signs You Should Quit Out Of InDesign And Call It A Day (Or Night)
Even a bad day of working in InDesign is pretty good to some of us geeks. Still, you have to know when to say “enough is enough.” Here are some signs it’s time to step away from the computer.
From the Home Office in Fremont
10. You just exported a file called AAAAAAARGH.pdf
9. You had to confirm saving over an older AAAAAAARGH.pdf on your desktop.
8. You just tried to use a Quark keyboard shortcut that hasn’t worked since the first Clinton administration.
7. You just had a knock-down drag-out fight with your significant other over hyphenation zones.
6. You just kissed your dog because you were finally able to delete an undeletable swatch.
5. You just said in your best Princess Leia voice, “Help me Layout Adjustment, you’re my only hope.”
4. You just spent half an hour trying to choose between Mocha and Ochre for your User color.
3. You just said to the plant on your desk, “What are YOU looking at?”
2. You just sent a co-worker a dirty joke. In GREP.
1. Command+click…nope…shift+click…nope…opt+click…nope…
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11. The last 4 hours of your day has been counting the number of butterflies that you have killed inside the InDesign Easter Egg.
LOL, Mike! A couple more:
* You can recite the InDesign has unexpectedly quit dialog box by heart.
* You start pressing V and W over and over again in applications other than InDesign.
On a similar note, my late co-author Bruce Fraser once wrote that he’d been working with Photoshop so long one day that when he walked into the kitchen he wondered why one faucet was labeled “C” for “Cyan”.
I remember long nights of Freehand (yes, I am ancient) and then shopping in a supermarket for food -dazed- trying to command-z the item I’d just picked up by mistake.
Not the undeletable swatch!
Well don’t forget the top reason for quitting out of InDesign – THE END OF THE WORK DAY – wahooo.
It’s quitting time at 5.30 p.m. GMT and InDesign goes bye-bye.
But I don’t have any stories regarding psychotic episodes in using InDesign. Sorry – but when InDesign turns off so do I.
@David: How many times have I pressed V in a Word or Text Edit document to get my selection tool back? haha!
12. If you are reading a book at your desk and you click your mouse to turn the page.
It’s time to go home when your PC is freezing up because of all the open Adobe apps, and InDesign takes 2 minutes to refresh after every click
It is too late already when you are in traffic on the way home and want to change the view options to “high quality” because the break lights of the car in front of you look too pixelated. True story.
It´s too late when you press Command+Z when you spill your (25th) cup of coffee to your desk (true story).
(ps. And when I got home at the same night, I tried to open my apartment´s door with my car´s remote…=)
CRAP.pdf are usually the files I export.
I’m so glad I’m not the only one that thinks in short cuts after a long day. XD
How DO you get rid an undeleteable swatch?
I have a document that has multiple occurrences of PMS 340 U with a number after it. I’ve determined that they get there from imported AI files, but even I delete the offending AI image, I can’t delete its now-unused color swatch.
I’m in the habit of doing the next edition by taking last issue’s file and replacing all the text and pictures, but this time I rebuilt the file from scratch, and after placing images, still end up with multiple instances of a color.
I can’t seem to alias them to one PMS, either.
Try exporting to INX and working on that file.
Hahaha! I believe no. 10 happens to me always. I’ll export the pdf as asdf.pdf or zzzzz.pdf.
This post seems a good one to respond to… although my question is unrelated – it is very related. This is because I am ready to strangle InDesign at the moment. I REALLY HOPE someone can help me with this!
I have a document with initial roman numeral pages that switch to arabic at the start of the first official chapter. pretty standard. But for some reason, I have two right-sided pages that show up as uppercase roman numerals on the page even though in the pages pallet they are correctly labeled as lowercase. All the settings seem correct, but for some reason there has been nothing I can do about this! Anyone ever experienced this? Help!!!
@beth: The only thing I can think of is that you have the All Uppercase font style applied to the page numbers (that would turn the lowercase roman numerals into uppercase).
Great list!
True story: After a particularly long overnight that turned into a longer day, a female in the account management department said she was having PMS problems and going home early. I replied “Wait, what kind of Pantone issue are you having? Shouldn’t the design department be handling that?”