changing default bullets & numbering across the document

[homy]

So I know how to create paragraph style with numbering and formatting. that's not what I'm after.

I want to know how I can change the default bulleting formatting, like making a change to indents and positions, and have them apply every time I use bullet points regardless of paragraph style im using.

Hope it makes sense.

[AnneMarie Concepcion · Accepted solution]

The only thing you can change as a default for *any style* are the things you change with no document open. So after you close any open INDD files, switch to the Type tool and choose Bullets & Numbering from the Control Panel menu. There you'll find that you change the bullet character (• or * for example) and the numbering style (1,2,3 or i,ii,iii for example), the separator character to use (something other than the default Tab character) and if there's a character style you want to apply to either, you can choose (and create that).  

But you can't change indents and positions that "would work with any paragraph style" because those are based on an existing set of paragraph attributes. You'll see those fields are dimmed.

Now, *if* you base all your paragraph styles in your documents on a parent style that is present in all your new documents --- the Basic Paragraph style, or maybe your own that you've created and added no docs open --- then you could edit the Bullets and Numbering panel in that parent style, and that would be the default for all paragraph styles you create.

I don't recommend changing the Basic Paragraph settings, because that could lead to aggravation and confusion down the road if you ever need to copy/paste text from one doc to another. Better to create a new paragraph style with no docs open, maybe called "Base" or "BN Base" and put your desired  bullets and numbering defaults in there. Save your changes to the application defaults by restarting InDesign.

Then just make sure for all new docs you create from then on, whenever you create a new paragraph style, you changed the "based on" style from the default of the same style to the "Base" one. 

AM

[federico platon]

Perfect! Nothing missing in this answer, from one of the top experts of InDesign you could ask for.

[AnneMarie Concepcion]

Aw shucks, federico. 😉