Autofilling Text to Master Page

[Mmmhmm?]

I feel sure this question has more to do with my limited knowledge of Adobe Indesign rather than a shortcoming of the program, but here goes:

My documents contain part numbers in 2-3 places. Once on the title page, once on the product page and in every following page at the bottom right corner of each document. Right now, I edit each location. My question is, can I get indesign to autofill those three locations if I just type into 1 of them?

Ex: I type the part number into the title page, and it autofills into the master pages.

[Randy Hagan]

I'm assuming that you're building separate documents for each product product number. It'll take some fiddling, but this may help:

Linked Content features within InDesign

You can still create publications with multiple products, provided you develop a workflow with a template using placeholders and then populating linked content within discrete InDesign documents. After that, look into InDesign's Book functions. For more details on how to use book to combine multiple InDesign documents, check out the link below:

Create book files with InDesign

It's kind of an intricate workflow, and you may decide that what you desire to do ultimately isn't worth the effort. But technically, it can be done.

Hope this helps,

Randy

[David Popham]

As long as you're using paragraph styles, you can use a Text Variable to accomplish what you're trying to do.

1. Create a paragraph style and apply it to the part number in the title area.

2. Create a paragraph style for the running footer with appropriate formatting.

3. Choose Type > Text Variables > Define, then click the New button in the dialog.

4. Give the variable a name.

5. For Type:, select Running Header (Paragraph Style) from the menu, and in Style:, choose the part number style. For the Use: setting, try First on Page (depending on how your content is structured, you may need to switch to Last on Page).

6. In the text frame for the running footer, choose Type > Text Variables > Insert Variable and click on the variable you just created.

If you make any changes to the part number, it will update in the footer, but you'll likely need to redraw the screen to see the change. The keyboard shortcut to redraw the screen is Shift + F5.

Keep in mind that the text frame with the variable needs to be wide enough to accommodate the part number, or InDesign will squeeze the text as much as it needs in order to fit.