Copy and paste INDD-file

[Jonathan32years]

Hi,

If I copy and paste INDD-file will the copy be exactly like the original? 

Or is copying doing something with image quality example?

Thank you!

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

If you copy and paste content from one INDD file to another, every aspect of what you cut and paste should be preserved in the new document. All relevant styles will be copied (Paragraph, Character, Table, etc.) if they are new to the destination. If any style with the same name exists in the destination doc, it will be applied to the new material, essentially overwriting the imported style.

Images, illustrations, text boxes and tables will similarly import without changes if new, and will retain their characteristics unless overwritten by an existing style.

Document-wide elements will not (usually) paste successfully. If you have a TOC, it may or may not paste to the new document depending on how it's defined and included in the source doc.

But in general, ID is very good about cut and paste between documents. In fact, it's a standard way to clean up and fix corrupt documents by cutting and pasting ALL content from the broken one to a new, clean file.

—

[Willi Adelberger]

I do not understand what you mean?

1. Do you mean to copy an INDD file? If you copy and place it on the same place, in the same folder/directory with  a different name it will work fine as all links are ok.
2. If you copy an indd file and place in a different directory/folder or drive the links to related images and other files will be lost. Even fonts might not found if you use fond from the Documents Fonts Folder.
3. If you mean to copy and paste some of its content, you shoulld specify what you mean.

[Luke Jennings3]

You can't be 100% sure a copy/paste from one document will be identical in the 2nd document. It would depend on the document preferences and color settings, for example, if the preferences for size and position of subscripts is not identical, there will be changes. A work around would be to duplicate the original document, delete all content, then copy/paste. Another way to insure nothing changes is to place the original InDesign file into the new document.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

All absolutely correct. I think the takeaway for the OP is that yes, cut and paste preserves all content and all styles/aspects that are not redefined in the target document. That's not always the case in the document app world.

If a style or setting is defined in the target document, it will control the pasted material's format. This is generally a good thing; the pasted material will have its BODY style updated to match the new document instead of (probably) needing to be manually reformatted, and so forth.

But if a style is unique to the cut material, it will be added to the target document; if the new document does not have a CHAPTER HEADING style, one pasted from the source document will be added to the styles without change.

As long as you understand this process, you can usually make it work to your advantage — by making sure styles are unique/not defined when you want to copy them to a new document, and making sure named styles match when you want the new document to update the formatting of the pasted material.

—