Date: April 30th 2007

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*** InCopyFlow ***

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Tips and techniques for Adobe InCopy/InDesign Workflow Users

In this Issue:
-- Where's My Story?
-- Personalize InCopy's Defaults
-- Permanently Enable Track Changes?

Issue 4, 4/30/07
Written by Anne-Marie "HerGeekness" Concepcion ... for her InCopy students, colleagues, and interested subscribers (unsubscribe link at the bottom)

(c) 2007 Seneca Design & Training, Inc.

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Where's My Story?

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Finding a particular story in Galley or Story view can be frustrating if the layout or assignment you've opened has a lot of workflow stories. All those grey story separator bars look the same, and you find yourself scrolling up and down looking for any recognizable text in the specific story you're trying to edit.

The next time you find yourself in Needle in Haystack mode, do this: Go back to Layout view and drag over the first few words in your story to select them. Now switch back to Galley or Story. Your selection should be at the top of the window, with its gray story bar right above it. (Making a selection before switching views is also great for quickly finding text in the middle of a story in the new view.)

That's not the tip, though! This one is: To make this story easy to find throughout the rest of your editing session, Option/Alt-click on the triangle in your story's separator bar. That one click will collapse all the other stories into their separator bars except for the one you're working on. Now, the only text visible in Galley/Story is the text belonging to your story.

Note that if your story was towards the bottom of the window, this "collapse all others" technique appears to work too well and you end up with an empty window! Don't panic, it's just that InCopy didn't change the scroll bar position. A single tap on your keyboard's Home key will autoscroll the window to the top and reveal the content.

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Personalize InCopy's Defaults

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Do you constantly change the same settings over and over again when you're working in InCopy? Perhaps you always turn on Show Hidden Characters? Or you always switch from the default Story view to Layout after opening a new file?

Take a few minutes today and set the program up to run the way you want it to, by default. Application defaults are easy to modify in InCopy; just choose your desired Preference settings, palette arrangements and menu choices when no documents are open in the program. To be doubly sure your changes are permanent, quit out of InCopy after tweaking its defaults, then start it up again before you open any documents.

Here are a few changes that a lot of the editors I've worked with find useful:

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Default View

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InCopy's default is to show you a newly-opened file in Story View, which most users find less than helpful with an unfamiliar layout or assignment.

If you go to the View menu (with no documents open, remember) you'll see a checkmark next to Story. Change the default by choosing Layout. That's it! From now on, all the files open in Layout view from the start.

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Drag and Drop Editing

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The ability to drag selected text from one location and drop it elsewhere in the story is a "love it or hate it" feature for most users. InCopy's defaults are to split the difference: it's enabled in Galley/Story but disabled in Layout.

Go to InCopy > Preferences (or Edit > Preferences on Windows) and select the Type category to reveal the Drag and Drop Text Editing checkboxes. By default, only the Galley/Story one is checked. If you're a "love it," turn on the checkbox for Layout so the feature is available in any view; if you're a "hate it," turn off the checkbox for Galley/Story so it's disabled everywhere.

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Palette Arrangement

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Have you taken the time to create a custom Workspace (Window > Workspace > Save Workspace) for yourself? Choose that workspace with no documents open and it'll be the default palette arrangement the next time you open InCopy.

However, since InCopy remembers palette locations from one editing session to the next -- that's a feature not a bug, son -- you'll need to reset them to your workspace quite frequently. A solution to that is to assign a keyboard shortcut to your workspace in Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts > Product Area: Window Menu (scroll down to the entries for Workspaces). That way, a quick tap on F1 or whatever key you assign to your workspace will clean them right up.

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Dynamic Spelling

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When Dynamic Spelling is enabled, InCopy does on-the-fly spell checking a la Microsoft Word, adding non-printing red squiggly underlines to words it doesn't recognize in its dictionary. Right-clicking (Ctrl-clicking with a one-button mouse) on the flagged words reveals a list of suggested corrections to choose from, as well as commands to ignore the word or to add it to the dictionary. It also flags capitalization errors and repeated words with a green squiggly.

InCopy has Dynamic Spelling turned off by default. If you'd prefer it enabled in all your documents, choose it from the Edit > Spelling fly-out menu with no documents open. You could always turn it off (just choose it again, it's a toggle) if it gets too distracting in certain stories.

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Others

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There are a ton more defaults you can change -- hide guides, turn off Tool tips, show the Structure panel -- so InCopy works the way you want it to work. I hope this short list gets you motivated to explore!

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Permanently Enable Track Changes?

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Speaking of tweaking default settings ...

At least once a month, an InCopy user e-mails me and asks if Track Changes could be turned on by default for all stories. The answer is no, unfortunately.

While it seems at first that it is a customizable default -- you can turn it on with no documents open -- it only applies to documents you create from InCopy's File > New command, not to layouts or assignments or the workflow stories they contain.

The only way for one of these stories to "remember" that Tracked Changes should be active is for an InCopy user to check it out, turn on Track Changes, and check it back in.

You can automate this somewhat, though:

1. Before anyone checks out any stories, have an editor, a production manager, or a designer with InCopy open the layout (the .indd file) in InCopy and shift-click all the assignment names in the Assignments palette, including the "Unassigned InCopy Content" one if it has any stories. (If you're not using Assignments, just select the Unassigned category).
2. Choose Check Out from the palette menu (or press Command/Control-F9) to check out all the stories in the palette selection.
3. Go to the Track Changes menu and choose Enable Tracking in All Stories.
4. Finally, close the file, clicking the OK button at the prompt to check in all the stories.

So ... doable, but not ideal. An "enable Track Changes" checkbox in InDesign, something the designer could turn on as they export stories, would be a great feature request for the next version (CS4) of InDesign; or even something in InCopy that would do the same thing. Take a second to fill out a Feature Request, the time is ripe! (And I know for a fact that the right people read these):

Adobe's Feature Request Form
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^* MASTER THE INCOPY WORKFLOW WITH HERGEEKNESS!

Do you like what you read in InCopyFlow? Find anything useful? Bring me or any of my hand-picked Associate Geeks in for a session or two of hands-on training for your designers and editors; here in Chicago or any other city near an airport, and you can have this level of expertise all to yourself. All training comes with three years of 24/7 follow-up support for each student by phone or e-mail.

To learn more, or hear what other clients have to say, contact us or fill out the no-obligation "Request a Training Quote' form on Seneca's site: http://www.senecadesign.com/training/request.html

Recent InCopy/InDesign workflow training clients in Chicago and parts beyond include Advanstar Media (trade magazines); Marquette University (collateral and catalogs); Perfection Learning Corp. (textbooks); St. Mary's Press (book publisher); Tyndale House Publishers (book publisher); and Abercrombie & Kent (travel brochures). *^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

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InCopyFlow is a free publication written by Anne-Marie "HerGeekness" Concepcion, a design studio owner, software trainer and publishing consultant. She's an Adobe Certified Expert (ACE) in InDesign and InCopy and an independent Adobe Certified Instructor specializing in helping workgroups master the InDesign/InCopy workflow. Anne-Marie owns Seneca Design & Training, Inc. in Chicago, Illinois (http://www.senecadesign.com/).

Don't hog this all to yourself! Pass it on to your hard-working colleagues so they can learn some tips too, they'll thank you for it.

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Contact Seneca by phone at 312-946-1100 or e-mail at info@senecadesign.com

Copyright 2007 by Seneca Design & Training, Inc. Please forward without cutting. Please contact Seneca for reprint permissions. We don't guarantee accuracy of articles. Company or product names mentioned in InCopyFlow may be registered trademarks, we use the names in an editorial fashion with no intention of infringement.

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