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marianna30814405r9h1
Participant
June 30, 2023
Question

Importing and adapt to different A-size

  • June 30, 2023
  • 2 replies
  • 870 views

Hi, I am a InDesign beginner.

I would like to reproduce an A4 work in a A3
I copied and pasted all content from the A4 to A3, now how can I automatically adapt all this content to the A3, they are of course still in A4.
Thank you!
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    2 replies

    AlanGilbertson
    Community Expert
    AlanGilbertsonCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    July 1, 2023

    In the InDesign File menu, you'll see "Adjust Layout." You're not changing the geometry, just scaling, so this is basically a one-click solution. Be sure to check the box that says "Adjust font size":

     

      James Gifford—NitroPress
      James Gifford—NitroPress
      Legend
      July 1, 2023

      I am reluctant to recommend Adjust Layout, especially to what seem to be less than expert users. It's just one of those features that doesn't work as well as it should — that is, it works fine some part of the time, and makes a difficult mess the rest of the time.

       

      However, A-size to A-size adjustment, which is entirely a scaling issue, is almost certainly right in its tech-demo wheelhouse. 🙂

        AlanGilbertson
        Community Expert
        AlanGilbertsonCommunity Expert
        Community Expert
        July 1, 2023

        That was my thought, although I have to say that Adjust Layout was superior to Alternate Layout and Liquid Layout even in beta. When we were originally testing it, I was impressed by how quick and easy it was to use. It breaks down when the aspect ratio changes too much, especially switching between landscape and portrait. Never did much testing on that, because at the time it looked too broken to be worth exploring. I've rarely had an occasion to use it in real work projects.

        James Gifford—NitroPress
        James Gifford—NitroPress
        Legend
        July 1, 2023

        A very simple method, which works well because of A-series scaling, is to export the work as-is (A4) to PDF, then either print that scaled up to full paper size at A3, or place the PDF in an A3 InDesign document so that you can add other elements and pages and have it remain something of a native, unified doc.

         

        You may also be able to place the A4 doc in an A3 document and retain something like editability — I don't do much INDD-inside-INDD work, so I am not sure about scalability and editing. You can give it a try, though.

         

        As for your first method: you can flow text into a new document and it will adapt to whatever styles and margins you define in the latter; for instance, you could have your BODY style at 10/12 in the A4 doc and 12/14 in the A3 doc, and it would automatically map and adjust to the larger font. If what you have is a complex layout, though, there are no good tools or shortcuts for having to manually scale and place things on the larger pages, although paste-select all-scale up might be a "mostly" shortcut. It might even be a "nearly there" shortcut, again, because of the standard A-series page proportions.

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