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Lorie Zweifel
Lorie Zweifel
Inspiring
April 8, 2018
Question

Hotkeys (Shortcut) for Bold Italics in Indesign CC 2018

  • April 8, 2018
  • 2 replies
  • 7822 views

This should be an easy one.....  but why does it not work.

I am editing an extremely large manuscript and each and every page has multiple words that now need to be Bold and Italics...  the amount of time I am wasting moving from the mouse to the keyboard is ridiculous.  In my perfect world my fingers would never leave the keyboard!

Anyway, I am confused as to why the shortcuts to Shift or Shift Command B and I are not working within indesign.

Thank you!

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    2 replies

    Derek Cross
    Community Expert
    Derek CrossCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    April 8, 2018

    The shortcuts you want to use maybe MSWord ones and wouldn't work in InDesign.

    Use Character styles for Bold Italic (assuming your typeface has bold italic) and use Quick apply or Find/Change if you have Word  formatting already applied (Direct formatting in Word is called Local formatting in InDesign) or run the Preptext script – even better! – do the whole thing in one go: https://indesignsecrets.com/perfectpreptext-a-smart-way-to-style-local-formatting.php

    rob day
    Community Expert
    rob dayCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    April 8, 2018

    InDesign doesn't let you apply a fake bold or italic as a style the way word processing programs might—you have to use the font family's real bold font.

    This family has no bold or italic, so bold isn't an option and I would have to select Script to get an Italic.

    The best you can do is setup a Character Style, which can be a assigned key commands from a numeric keyboard. Universe regular has a bold font but its name is 65 Bold not Bold

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