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Question

Keeping Paragraph Styles etc organised

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
August 8, 2019
4 replies
1307 views

One major frustration I have with indesign is keeping my styles dialogues straight over a book of documents.

I always use one document (The contents page) as my 'master' and determine font styles, colours etc here, including organisng where they appear in the dialogue list. However when I sync the styles in the other documents are all over the place in terms of their organisation. Worse foldered styles are opened out and through the process of typing closed folders in the paragraph styles open up without my intervention, they are always open, why!

Is there a way to organise styles so that for instance 'body text' always appears at the top, or at the very least when I sync, the master styles layout is copied across the other documents?

Seems like a simple thing but I am not seeing anything?

This topic has been closed for replies.

Peter Kahrel

Community Expert

You can group styles together or get them in a particular order by using numbered or prefixes (01 body text, 02. . .), then sort them using the style panel's Sort by Name function.

P.

garethi55139778Author

Known Participant

Yes I had considered this. Sadly it does not stop folders randomly opening up. I have a folder of styles related to contents etc that says 'do not touch!'

No fonts styles in here are touched however within any document that folder with continuously open out, there is nothing you can do to stop it.

Peter Villevoye

Community Expert

Too bad, that the display of the content of these Style panels aren't part of a saved Workspace (just its status, size, and position)...

But I just tested a file with open and closed folders in the Styles panel, and when I save/close the file and re-open it, all folders are closed ! Seems that your Preferences might need a reset... You know how to do this ?

Derek Cross

Community Expert

For years I’ve been suggesting to the InDesign team that they implement a system whereby you can color code Styles - I attach a mock-up of what I have in mind. You assign a color to each style and group them in a way that suits you. They always enthuse and say it’s a great idea, but I nothing happens.

If you agree and would like it implemented, Like it on here and add it to the InDesign feature requests: Adobe InDesign Feedback

L

Laubender

Community Expert

Hi garethi55139778 ,

this should be doable with scripting the styles. The order of styles could be governed by the style source document of a book of documents. There is a scripting method move() for paragraph styles, character styles, cell styles, table styles and object styles.

Unfortunately there is no method move() for swatches. That would make that perfect.

I guess that would be a paid script because the effort of testing is quite large.

Regards,
Uwe

garethi55139778Author

Known Participant

Hi Uwe,

I have never touched scripting, wouldnt have a clue!

Randy Hagan

Community Expert

I would suggest yes, by using template files rather than a single book document.

When you open a copy of a template file, the copy is set up exactly the same as the template. If there's a custom hierarchy of paragraph and character styles in the template, it's stacked the same way in the opened copy from the template. That would provide a more consistent workflow, I think, than using the Copy Styles options in a new document.

Jus' thinking about this ... very interesting question.

Hope this helps,

Randy

garethi55139778Author

Known Participant

Hi Randy.

I get what you are saying but when preparing a tender as in our case we often can reuse stuff from another tender and invariably within each tender we will tweak fonts and colours everytime. A template would assume we are not going to touch anything which unfortunately is not the case

Randy Hagan

Community Expert

Please let me differ with you here. I would actually suggest that using templates would make those kinds of changes easier, not more difficult.

For example, by building, say, bullet/list/subhed styles based on your "body text" style, you could simply change the font in one place and automatically apply those changes across all the styles in your document. Similarly, you could change the color on master pages for section tabs, frames and borders and immediately change them globally across your new document.

The link below offers how you can quickly edit and modify templates to account for the changes you want to make. While it refers to a dated version of InDesign (CS3), the concepts discussed here apply with InDesign CC (2019) just as well:

Customizing Predesigned InDesign Templates > Getting Your Feet Wet with InDesign CS3 Templates

Don't think of InDesign templates as something cast in stone so much as a convenient stepping-off point which lets you shortcut modifying InDesign documents while designing to a common theme. Using well-suited templates really makes the production process easier, not harder.

*Climbing off my soapbox*

Hope this helps you. It really can. I promise.

Randy

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