Letters in body of text

daniellef53309996  wrote Can you select certain letters in a body of text to be able to change it's opacity for all of those letters? For example just being able to select all the letter E's and changing it's opacity. Thank you

Hi Danielle,

I don't know how versed you are with InDesign.

So I picked out all things important for me from your post.

We have:

1. select certain letters

2. all the letters E's

3. opacity

To 1: In that combination I'd say this is not possible. Not at all.

We cannot "select" certain letters that are not in a consecutive string with InDesign. Unfortunately.
We can reach them, but we cannot select them in one go. Just one after another. I mean: "select"—like in "select with the text tool".

To 2: If we can drop the word "select" and say:

Reach out for "all the letters E's" and format them in a special way, then yes, this is possible. By Find/Change for example.

Or by using special paragraph styles where we define the formatting of letters like "E" with an automatic "Find a text pattern"-machine that is called GREP. With GREP it is possible to tell a paragraph style: Find all letters "E" and apply a character style to the found characters. Automatically. So far so good.

To 3: Now here is the real difficulty:
opacity

If you mean "opacity" like "tint", and "tint" is not "opacity" and not transparent at all, then it's easy. Just set up a paragraph style with a GREP command for "E" and apply a character style where "tint" is reduced, let's say to 60% of the used color with the paragraph style.

Done.

But: If you mean "opacity" like it is done with the Effects panel, then we have a problem.

The Effects panel is able to apply opacity to text. That's the good news.

But it can do that only per text frame. That's the bad news.

The effect cannot discern between letter "e" or not-letter-"e" for example.

It's all text in the frame or nothing.

End of the story, if we want the text keep editable and live?

No, like others here suggested:

Using extra text frames for all letters "e" flowing with a story? Can be done.

Using outlined graphics shaped as "e" that are flowing with a story? Also this.

All possible but inconvenient if one likes to keep the text editable. Think of hyphenation. Think of changing text size in the last minute before publishing, think of other problems that come along if you want add text to the story where letter "e" is involved.

So again: End of story?
Not quite yet. We could reach our goal by using a combination of tricks.

Trick 1:

Use two text frames that are exactly stacked on each other. Same size. Same position.

Plus create two paragraph styles that are based on each other: Style A and Style B.

Text frame A on top is formatted with style A.

Style A has a fill color for all text with swatch "None".

The GREP pattern is telling the text to format all letters "e" with fill color "Black".

Set opacity or any other effect you want to see with letters "e" to text of frame A with the Effects panel.

Text frame B stacked below is formatted with style B.

Style B has a fill color for all text with swatch "Black".

The GREP pattern is telling the text to format all letters "e" with fill color "None".

To get the same text for both frames copy text from frame A and paste it unformatted to frame B.

Do that every time when the text is edited with frame A.

If you change the font of style A you need not do anything else: Style B will follow immediately.

Trick 2:

Let changes in text of frame A be automatically transferred to frame B.

That involve—of course—GREP patterns with GREP Styles and linked stories.

Now what is a linked story?
A linked story is a story that can follow another story consistantly in content.

If the master is changed, the linked story will follow if it is updated through the Links panel.

How can we get a linked story?

Use the Conveyor Belt Tool, official name is "Content Place Tool".

Load text frame A to the belt. Place the text frame as linked frame ( = linked story ) to the page. That is our text frame B.

Define how the two frames and stories are tied to each other—formatting of the frames, formatting of the text—with the Links Options in the Links panel.

Now we have a set of two text frames, that are tied together.

Set opacity or any other effect you want to see with letters "E" to text of frame A.

If you change the formatting of style A—used throughout frame A, style B used with frame B will follow. B is based on A.

If you change the contents of the master story in the text frame on top, the contents of the frame below will follow if updated through the Links panel.

Here some screenshot to illustrate this. The two text frames A and B next to each other. Not stacked.
The opacity of frame A is already changed by using the Effects panel.

Here stacked on each other:

Editing is best done with the Story Editor window. Below frame A on top of B is selected.
The little Link adornment at frame B is showing a not updated link.

Also seen in the Links panel.

After updating the link in the Links panel:

( Oops. Forgot an "e" with "here". No problem. Edit the text again and update the link. )

A different effect is used with frame A. "Differenz" in my German UI. I stacked a graphic frame with a gradient below to make that more visible. Note, that the links panel is showing that all is up-to-date.

If you want it easy go with trick 1. It's a bit more effort to synchronize the contents and the frame's dimensions, if something is changing, but it's way less complex to set this all up like in trick 2 with a linked text frame/story.

Regards,
Uwe

What are you trying to achieve? Is this for body text or a heading?

If it's a short amount of text, you can convert the "e's" to Outlines in the Type menu and drop the transparency. The anchoring is automatic.

you must break the text you will add opacity for it then you will add the transparency on it

No, transparency is a frame attribute. If you want to do this, you have to cut and copy the letter(s) in separate rames, then anchor the frames back in the text. Doable if you have only a few…