Split Windows in InDesign

Useful but oft ignored is the Split Windows feature in InDesign which gives two views of the same document. For example, one pain in the neck of working in InDesign is when highlighting the text to change the text colour it’s difficult to see the new shade without turning off the highly. That’s because all colours are inverted when selected as can be seen in the screen shot below, the text looks purple in the screenshot but in actual fact it’s green. Most people deselect to view the new colour which can be time consuming if you want to skim through a number of different shades to find the right one. There is an easy solution to this known as Split Window in InDesign.

Highlighted Text with Inverted Colours

So how can you preview your text colours without committing a number of selection acrobatics? One of the things shown on the InDesign Training Courses is a neat little feature known as Split Window which is ideal for previewing text colour amongst other things.

Split Window Icon

It only takes a second but clicking on the tiny Split Window icon at the bottom right of the screen lets you view two screens at a time. Each screen has its own viewing percentage options so you can zoom in and out at leisure looking at the whole or a part of the document in each window. Fantastic when all you want to do is preview text colours without continually selecting and deselecting the text itself.

The Two Screens

As can be seen in the example above the left side shows the highlight but inverted text whilst the one on the right gives the actual text colour.

When finished simply click back on the ‘Split Window’ icon to return to normal view

Split Window in InDesign

This nifty little feature has actually been around since CS6 which means its not an all singing all dancing new feature from InDesign 2019. However anyone who works regularly with long documents and needs to view different sections of a document at the same time will find it both a useful and time-saving little feature. 

Click the Split Window in InDesign and find out.

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