Participant

Question

Indesign feels like microsoft excel but worse

Forum|Forum|3 months ago
October 31, 2025
4 replies
268 views

Object Styles, Paragraph Styles, I'm really trying to get a grip on them but my god.

Simple example. I have an image frame and a text frame. The text frame contains the caption for the image. I want the text frame to sit at the bottom of the image frame. The image frame is a placeholder, because each page will have different size images. So the captions need to move with the image dynamically.

Anchored object? Group? I tried and at some point, the caption text remained underneath the image, even when scaling the image frame! But what about the image and text frames underneath them? I just want to make certain that the margins between each frame are the same for every page, and that I can increase a margin that is then corrected on all pages equally...editing in html is more user friendly than this. Everything is jumping around and it just reminds me wrestling with excel.

E

Eugene Tyson

Community Expert

Typically if I want text and images with captions to flow with the text, I'll put them in a table within the text.

So a 2 row 1 column table.

In top row put the image

In the bottom row put the caption (or anchor the generated caption if that's what you're doing?)

Not it's in the table, the table flows with the text.

Just in the Table Options set them to Keep With Next Row - https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/formatting-tables.html#:~:text=To%20keep%20the%20selected%20rows%20together%2C%20select%20Keep%20With%20Next%20Row.

Then you can resize your image without having scale the text - no need for them to be grouped.

Once you do one image/caption table you can reuse them in other places.

BobLevine

Community Expert

And don't forget about the gap tool if you need space between objects.

Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Community Expert

As far as the image frame and text frame having the same margin (I'm interpeting that as the space between them), butt them together at the bottom of the image frame and the top of the text frame. That will make it easier to align them. Then use text inset to push the text down from the top of the text frame.

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

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anepanneAuthor

Participant

I dont quite follow what you are suggesting? To simplify my question, let's say I have two empty frames and I want the top edge of the bottom frame to align with the bottom edge of the top frame. So when I scale up the top frame, the bottom frame should move down and vice versa. I don't want to have to nest things in groups. I just want the top left corner of the bottom frame to be attached to the bottom left corner of the top frame.

rob day

Community Expert

I just want the top left corner of the bottom frame to be attached to the bottom left corner of the top frame.

Hi @anepanne , Sounds like you want to align the objects—there is the Align panel. There is also a captioning tool for setting automatic metadata captions—see Object>Captions>Caption Setup...

For an alignment example, here I have a caption text frame that I want to align to the bottom of an image frame. I’ve set Align to to the margins, set Distribute Settings Use Spacing amount to 0, then clicked the Align Left Edges and Distribute Vertical Space buttons:

R

Randy Hagan

Community Expert

You need to check into the Text Wrap panel, and its capabilities. It lets you set distance away from selected element(s) with precise numerical control. You can learn more about how it works through this link, and the follow-on links associated with that help page.

This should get you up to speed, and get you the results you want. And if you have any other questions about how InDesign works/doesn't work how you'd like, please feel free to come back and ask. There are lots of sharp people around here who may be able to lend a hand.

Hope this helps,

Randy

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anepanneAuthor

Participant

Hi Randy, thanks for your suggestion, but it's not quite what I'm after. Please read my reply to Dave Creamer's comment.

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