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Best Practices For Working Across Multiple Documents In Adobe InDesign

Okay. So it is time to look at one of the best practices when you're working between a couple of documents. Some of them are easy. Some of them would kind of cover a little bit before I want to put them all into one amazing video. First up stealing colors and paragraph styles. So in my swatches panel I would like to go and steal some colors from load swatches. Find a document I'm using 05 long documents section two. Bring it in. You can see down here they brought in some new colors, the google ones, the Fedex ones. It's a great way of just kind of reaching in and grabbing new colors. Same for paragraph styles. Window styles, paragraph styles want to steal some styles from that same document. We're going to go to the little burger menu. Go to low paragraph styles section to give me them what do I want? I don't want you don't want you. I don't want you so you can decide what you want. Ok click OK. And I've got the hitting and the body copy to get started. Next bit of awesomeness is I wan...

t to be able to actually I'm going to close down that I've got this document open. I want to open up a second document file open. I'm going to steal stuff from one of the files that I made earlier. I'm going to grab it from this one which was one of my digital publishing guys. So I've got it open. Okay, so there's lots of stuff on here. I want to steal. Okay instead of tabbing between these two, you can just go to this option up here in the upper bar, arrange documents and you can see there's lots of different ways of doing this. I'm gonna have this option here. I've got one on this side, One on that side. Really good. When you've got a bigger screen than I do close on paragraph styles. You can see I can just grab you, copy it, paste it, grab you, drag it across and I'm in this other document. Ok? So you're not impressed? I'm going to go back to this first option here. How to get you impressed. I'm gonna open up that digital publishing one. So I've got my home page. It's way up here. Okay. I'm also working on a page down here and I'm kind of going back and forth. We've used our shortcut called command J. Ok? You can go to page one. Command J. page seven. Okay? And jump back and forth that way. But what we're gonna do is use this little icon down here, it's quite similar to the last one, except it splits the window in half with the same document. I'm still only looking at my digital publishing. Okay? So on this side here, I'm gonna zoom out so you can see the homepage on this side. I'm gonna zoom out so you can see the this page here, same document. Just looking at different pages really handy when you are maybe checking the contents page and looking further on in the document or if you've got a cover and back cover and you just want to kind of see them and how they relate to each other. It also works good is say on this side here, I can look at both. Looking at the cover here and you'll see they are totally connected with this. I move it, they move on both. So it's the same document. But what you can do is you can be working in really tight here working on the tracking and just keeping an eye on over here and the larger view to kind of see what's happening. Okay, so I'm gonna turn it off by clicking that same little icon down here. Now I want to go back. I should have done this at the beginning because I've forgotten the step. That's okay. I'm gonna go back up here. I'm going to split them in half. Let's pretend we're back here now. This new document over here. Okay. I want to steal lots of bits. Okay. But I'd like them to be a little bit special. Okay, We're gonna use something called the content collector. So I'm gonna zoom out over here and instead of just copying and pasting across, we're going to use this magic thing. Okay. Called the content place a tool. Actually there's a collector and a placer. So we're gonna start with the collector. What we're gonna do is I'm going to click on that? I want him. I want him. Let's say I want this thing as well. What else do I want? I want this chunk of text. You can see them all appearing down the bottom here. Now I can switch the placer either up here. Okay, grab the place a tool or you can toggle between the collector and the places down here. And a special option here is to create a link. You want to paste this over here? It comes across the image. I'm going to drag out. I can click on this first place my little image and then click once for all my text. The differences. Can you see this little locking icon? Remember? These are separate documents saved in different places but because they're linked. Watch this over here. Find say the image here. Okay I'm gonna go through and actually want to change this trick. Select it with the white arrow. To grab just that little circle I made. I'm gonna say you need to be the menu pink. Now back to my black arrow click over here. And what you'll notice is can you see that little link icon changed into like a little caution symbol to say that's been updated and I'm linked. You should know you might not see it because you might be in the preview mode. So w so make sure you're working in the normal mode which is the W. Key. And over here you can say actually click on this and an undated. Cool. Huh? Now a circle. Not that useful but in terms of text it can be super useful. You can have one kind of like parent text document and or you can have lots of other documents that linked to it. Maybe is your pricing or your address or your disclosure statement something that gets really used. Lots you can adjust it over here. I can't remember where it is now you are their shelves. Okay so men we adjusted our prices. It's now over here, click in here. It's updated 55 too. Huh? Now you can do something similar without the content collect and that's probably how I do it a little bit more. Okay so we're gonna go from arranged documents back to the single view. We're going to go to file open and in a folder and in your exercise files under oh seven multiple documents. Open up stationary set. Okay. Let's be on page one. And you see this is my letterhead. Actually I've got a comp slip on page two and business card on page three B on page one, what I'd like to do is use this address across all of them. I want them all to be linked. So instead of using the content collector we're going to use this method. So again too select with the black arrow. We're going to go to edit and we're going to go to something called place and link. We don't have to copy it first for some reason do that. You'll notice that the content collector just opens. So we are using that technique, just not using the icon. And what I'm gonna do here is I'm going to cook and drag out my text and I'm going to make it so it covers the whole consulate and the cool thing about this, like before I go through and change this, say that the address was wrong. It's actually 145. You'll notice down here instantly. As long as I'm not on my preview button, I'm on normal. Remember the W key click here and it goes and updates. Okay, let's say we want to do something even more special. Same sort of thing. I'm going to go have this first one selected, he's going to be the parent. I'm going to go to edit, copy and link. Place in. Link even come down to this one and I'm gonna place it in. But there's a few things I want to change. I want to change the layout because I want it to be first of all, type two, I want to be left aligned and I want to maybe resize this. Okay, so I want to do some stuff to. This thing. The only trouble with that though is if I go through now and update this top one here. Okay, so it's not dan, it's daniel come back down. You'll notice I get this arrow, click on it and it yes. And it goes back to all the same styling. The ticks came along, but the style changes. So what I want to do is open up my window, Styles, paragraph styles, lots of paragraph styles and in design and what I'll do is I'll delete this guy, go back to this first one here. Okay, I'm going to select it all. I'm going to give him a paragraph style because basically we're going to map them like we did earlier with the word styles. So we're gonna say you my friend are a style for the little head. Okay, Black arrow with it selected go to remember place and link come down here, click once. Okay. And what we're gonna do is I'm gonna restyle it same sort of way I'm going to drag it down, move it in, do some stuff to it like a tool, Right line, black arrow and make it even a little bit smaller so it fits near London down there. Great. Move it up a little bit. Okay, I'm spending lots of time now and let's do something really obvious. Let's change the color. Okay, I'm going to pick the turquoise from above. I don't like it, but it makes it really easy to look at, but it's going to make it really obvious. I'm going to select it all and make a new style Paragraph Style one. I'm going to call this one business card. I'm not going to base it on the letterhead one. I'm gonna make it its own lone ranger style. That's not part of it. It's just something that I do. It's up to you now. What we can do is this thing is linked you can still see it there, but we can do, it's a little fiddly I guess go to links now showing me the parent and this one, here's what I'm gonna do is right click this guy say link options and what I'd like to do is this bottom one here where you define a custom mapping on settings and you want to say new style mapping. The original one is going to be in letterhead and I'd like to map it down the bottom here too. Business card. Okay, good. Okay, now when I update, okay, I go up to here and I say it's no longer daniel at Manafort's Daniel manu furniture website that doesn't exist. Black Arrow, come down here, come slip. It's gonna update nicely. Now, business card though. Watch this click, yes, it updated with new furniture but also kept the style. Okay, I really like that one. That's great for having a parent. Now you could do this across lots of documents. Okay. Like we did with the content collector. I can grab this guy here. The parent edit place and select, going to a different document pasted in here. Okay, And they are still linked across documents gets a little bit more convoluted and potentially troublesome when you've got lots of documents all connected to each other. If you do have something linking you like actually stop being linked, you can just go to the links panel, right click it and say unlinked. Sometimes you gotta do it twice. There's two options in here, the original and this one unlinked. Nice. Now he is his own thing and he's not connected to that original document. Alright. So that is it on how to work effectively and efficiently across multiple documents in in design. All right. Let's get on to the next video.