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Question

I am baffled by the "content collector."

Forum|Forum|10 months ago
April 6, 2025
7 replies
4315 views

I've read the documenation here, which is pitifully inadequate to say the least. It also presents not one but two bad links that are supposed to take you to info about the Links panel or menu.

Opening this "tool" reveals a panel with a bunch of thumbnails on it. I may have loaded the "conveyor" with all items from a document in my first experiment with it. Clicking on the thumbnails on this conveyor does nothing. Selecting an item on a page and attempting to "load" the conveyor from the selection does nothing. There's no apparent way to remove stuff from the conveyor.

There does not appear to be any way to name any of the items in this thing. So, for example, if you have two reusable elements that are visually similar, there's no way to tell which one you're looking at in this row of dinky images.

There's no explanation of the numeral that appears on some thumbnails.

Switching to "content placer" and clicking on the page dumps a huge load of text that is apparently one of the items on the conveyor, but it doesn't resemble any of the thumbnails and there's no way to choose what gets dumped.

How is this thing useful?

How to

Barb Binder

Community Expert

Hi Thomas:

At this point all I really need is a way to put placeholder text in the footer for future writers to replace with the correct info.

In FrameMaker, we handle the manual revision info in the running heads by adding disconnected template frames to the master pages.

It's easier in InDesign. You can design the running heads so that they work well for the entire book and then one can Ctrl+Sh+click any parent page frame to override it on a body page. Once overriden, all content can be updated. The frame itself is still linked to the parent page, the content is not. For that reason, now you may want to put the content into three separate frames. (I'm showing a single frame.)

~Barb

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training

T

Thomas_Calvin

Inspiring

Cool. I'll try this, and put the Ctrl-Shift-click instruction in the placeholder text on the master page.

Barb Binder

Community Expert

Hi Mobius/Thomas:

Yes, you can add text before and after a variable. But looking at your example, I'm not clear where you would add the extra text. I'd do everything with variables and with tabs not tables—not that tables are wrong—I would just set tab stops because I'm comfortable with them and to me, they are less fussy that tables.

Here's an example parent page set-up. There are three variables and one marker:

DRAFT is a Custom Text variable defined as "DRAFT".
Chapter 1 is a Chapter Number variable with the word chapter in front and the colon after.
Running Header is Running Header <Paragraph Style> variable defined to call in text assigned the Title paragraph style
A is the Current Page Number Marker.

In a table or using tabs, this is all automatic. The only thing to be aware of is that the chapter number variable only increments if you're using a book—this means that each InDesign chapter (.indd file) needs to be a single .indd file and then we pull them all together into an .indd book file.

What I find difficult about answering questions on the forums is we don't know what you know. This might all be completely familiar to you and you're rolling your eyes because you knew all this or maybe you didn't realize how extensive variables can be.

If you have additional questions you know you can just ask us. We are always happy to help.

~Barb

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training

T

Thomas_Calvin

Inspiring

That's awesome, Barb! It's an unusual situation. As for my background, I did a huge amount of automation in Word using WordBasic back in the day, and wrote a whole manual in FrameMaker after that... doing everything with styles and variables and very little (if any) ad-hoc slop. As far as I could tell, it was all done the "right" and most resilient way.

Right now I'm in a situation where we have large manuals to which we publish updates, but only the pages (front and back) that contain changed information. That's why, in the footer, only the name of the revision makes sense as a document variable. Nothing else in the footer is predictable from one page to the next, because one updated page might be chapter 3, pages 7 & 8; and the next page after that is chapter 7, pages 13 & 14. That's why all that stuff has to be hand-enterable directly on the page: Using variables for those would make no sense, because you'd have at least half as many variables as pages.

I agree about the tabs. I inherited documents where the author was new and resorted to tables to make the layout work; I was going to switch to tabs, but then realized that this prevents me from pre-assigning a style to each of the three text areas above.

So for the footer I'll likely put the revision-name field in the corner on the master pages and then... I wanted to put placeholder text in the footer area for future writers who use the same master pages, so they know where to put the page number and chapter name from the original manual. But I guess that's not really needed; we have guidelines around the footer area.

Unless you have some better ideas!

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

@Thomas_Calvin

Why can't you use automatic PageNumber and contents of the appropriate ParaStyle / CharStyle - for Chapter's name?

Barb Binder

Community Expert

Hi @Mobius Strip :

A snippet is a collection of frames, including their size, position and content. We can save them all to a single snippet file and place them all in a new file. They are an excellent method of re-using frames but they don't maintain a link to the original so that updating content will update all usages, which was one of your criteria.

This demo shows me exporting all the parent page frames (12, I believe) as a snippet, and placing them all into a new file.

But now that you are talking about automating a running head, it would be helpful to see what you are putting together. Variables are often used in running heads to automate the content—have you looked into what they can do for you?

~Barb

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training

T

Thomas_Calvin

Inspiring

Thanks! You're right; cascading updates is a requirement.

I am introducing variables, and in fact I have a specific question about using them in a footer:

In our footer, we have a revision name. I've made this a variable that can be changed with each revision to the document and populate everywhere. So on a master page, I have a footer that consists of a one-row table with three cells (to facilitate centering and justification). One of those cells contains a field reference to the document revision name.

But... we need to allow document maintainers to hand-type the rest of the info in the footer on each page. I'd like to have placeholder text on the master page to tell writers what they need to enter in the footer. Is there a good way to do this? Screen shot attached.

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

@Thomas_Calvin

Just for clarification - so you're posting from a two different accounts?

If you go for a Book option - you can define and then use / synchronize Parent Pages in the documents that are part of the Book.

Barb Binder

Community Expert

Hi @Mobius Strip :

There are people who still use these features, just not many. If Adobe pulled the features, the users who do rely on them would be insensed. I'm a user like you, but I'd say they will continue to function as is.

That said, the documentation should be correct. The second link you pointed out isn't wrong, per se, but it is confusing. Remembering that the Content Collector tool and Edit > Place and Link are two ways to access the same feature, the information that appears is correct because it is explaining how the conveyor belt works. I did submit a request to clarify the heading because I can see the confusion.

As for this question: So... if one wants to create a collection of reusable elements that can be revised wherever they appear in the document, what is the intended (non-abandoned) method we're supposed to use? I'd choose CC Libraries.

You can create assets in Illustrator and Photoshop and use Place Link in the CC Library panel to add a linked copy to your InDesign files. If you edit the Library item, it will update all copies in all files that were add using Place Link. However, this only works with assets from Illustrator and Photoshop, we are not yet able to use Place Link for InDesign assets. This is a limitiation for sure (for now, anyway) but Libraries are very powerful and a lot of my clients are using them very successfully. For more details, see https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/creative-cloud-libraries-sync-share-assets.html.

~Barb

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training

M

Mobius StripAuthor

Known Participant

Thanks for that, Barb. I need to save all necessary files together on a local server at our company where everyone can access them. Therefore, as far as I know, CC libraries are not a viable solution. Plus the aforementioned inability to put InDesign elements in there.

@Robert at ID-Tasker had some helpful ideas up above, but I don't know how the described "snippets" function.

Here's an example of something I was trying to do today: Create a common page header, and then create a link to it on the facing page that was shifted toward the outer margin (mirroring its position on the other page). The header comprises a single-row, three-column table and then a separate line as a rule underneath that.

I used "Place and Link" to copy the header, which seemed to work... but then I discovered that

The linking instance of the item has the same name, and there's no indication in the layer list that it's a link. Not even a little "chain" icon. Not even "(linked)" appended to the name. So you have to manually rename every link, to keep track of which one's the master. Otherwise you have no idea which one is the master that you need to change in order to percolate the change through the whole document. Seriously?
The instances do not update automatically when you change the master. Once in a while you might see a yellow triangle on each now-out-of-date instance, or you might see an error flag in the status bar. Then you have to manually approve each update. This defeats much of the purpose of linking in the first place.

Am I missing something here, or is this design bungled?

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

[...]

Am I missing something here, or is this design bungled?

By @Mobius Strip

For the ones that has been updated - you need to check Links pallet.

Barb Binder

Community Expert

BTW, @Mobius Strip —I went to report the broken links you mentioned but only found the one on Using the Links panel. We would like to get these fixed but I'm not seeing a second one. Can let me know where it is?

Thanks in advance,

~Barb

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training

M

Mobius StripAuthor

Known Participant

Thanks for following up to fix that! Here's a screen shot.

Barb Binder

Community Expert

Hi @Mobius Strip:

I'll share an example of how this can be used below.

Before I start, please note that the Content Collector tool (it's also available as Edit > Place and Link) was introduced along with Alternate Layouts and Liquid Layouts for use in a DPS (Digital Publishing Solution) workflow, which was briefly included with InDesign before being removed and made available as only at the enterprise level. These three tools remained within InDesign and while some people use them to create ads in various sizes, most people never use the Content Collector, Liquid Layout or Alternate Layouts.

We have image size limitations here so my little video is going to go by quickly. You might have to watch it a few times for it to make sense. I place the bleeding heart image at the top. The second occurrence is duplicated by Alt/Opt dragging so these two are not linked together. The third one is added with the Content Collector tool and I'll link it to the original.

There are two basket buttons in the lower left of the conveyor belt: the first one shows the arrow pointing in (add image to the conveyor belt) and the second shows the arrow pointing out (add image from the conveyor belt to the page). I add the top image to the conveyor belt, then click the 2nd icon to get ready to remove it. I enable Create Link and choose Remove From Conveyor to the right of Map Styles. When I place the image, it is removed from the conveyor belt. Also, check the Layers panel—the linked image looks a bit different.

Finally, I add a drop shadow to the original image. You will see the blue link on the last image change to an alert to tell me that the original was modified. Clicking it will update it. And this is the point of Create Link: you can place an image multiple times, but have all occurrences tied back to the parent item, so changing the parent item can update the others too.

Finally, to remove your images from your conveyor belt, click the two buttons I'm pointing at below and click on the pasteboard to place each one. Once off the belt, you can just remove them from the page.

~Barb

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training

M

Mobius StripAuthor

Known Participant

Thanks for taking the time to do all that and provide the background information.

So... a suggestion: Get rid of these basically undocumented vestiges of abandoned products or ideas. If Content Collector is any example, they're wasting the time of customers who look for the way to complete common use cases and are told by the product documentation that this is it... when in fact it's a defunct stump.

OR... fix and document them. But I don't really think Content Collector can be fixed. This design defies all UI convention, common sense, or even intuition. You can't remove items from the collection without performing a dummy placement and then having to delete it from the page? That's not a professional or production-worthy design.

Anyway, I'm not going to rehash the issues I already pointed out above. I sincerely appreciate your taking the time to describe the functionality though!

So... if one wants to create a collection of reusable elements that can be revised wherever they appear in the document, what is the intended (non-abandoned) method we're supposed to use?

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

[...]

So... if one wants to create a collection of reusable elements that can be revised wherever they appear in the document, what is the intended (non-abandoned) method we're supposed to use?

By @Mobius Strip

You have 4x options:

1) Libraries - local or in the cloud,

2) Snippets - drag&drop object to your drive, then rename,

3) dedicated INDD file(s) - where you'll store your objects.

4) placeable files - images, vectors, INDD files.

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

First two icons - you can switch between LOADING and UNLOADING - or you can press "B":

When you're in LOADING - object over which you'll hover your cursor - will be "highlighted"

To switch between active item:

Hover over those three - and you'll get tooltip what they are doing:

M

Mobius StripAuthor

Known Participant

Thanks for the reply. I never see highlights in my conveyor. Also, the transport-style controls are always greyed out.

I have examined all the ToolTips, but the ones that exist don't answer the questions. For example, how do you remove stuff from the conveyor? Not "place and remove," just remove.

And there are still the unexplained numerals, and the fact that there's no way to name anything in this collection... so you can't find what you want to place.

Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Community Expert

To remove an item, make sure it is active in the conveyor and hit the Escape key.

David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

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