Looking for the Control Bar in InDesign CC 2019? The control bar no longer appears automatically when you install or update Creative Cloud. It now needs to be manually turned on from the Window menu. Why? Because Adobe have introduced the the new InDesign CC 2019 Properties Panel and this opens on the InDesign load. Just like the Control Bar the Properties Panel is also context sensitive and changes according to what is currently selected.
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.
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.
Following on from last months InDesign Tip of ‘Live Distribution’ this week we take a look at the various ways you can personalise your workflow a little more by tweaking with InDesign’s Placeholder Text Feature.
Did you know you can select which language type set you want your placeholder text displayed in?
Position your cursor in an empty text frame
Hold down Control & Select fill with Placeholder Text from the Type Menu
A placeholder option box pops up giving you the choice to fill your frame in an alternative language format
Click OK to apply
Create a text document in Word or Notepad
Fill it with the text you want to appear as Placeholder
Save and Name as Placeholder.txt in to your InDesign folder
Return to InDesign
Insert Placeholder Text into Text Frame as usual
Don’t have a good day
Have a great one
Greta
Admittedly there are hundreds, if not millions of tips and tricks hidden inside InDesign many of which are well known and used on a daily basis. In this particular InDesign Tips & Tricks post I’ve tried to include the more obscure ones and decided to start off with a personal favourite – Live Distribute, which has been with us since InDesign CS5