How do I get the baseline grid to start at the top of the frame?

[MarieMeyer]

How do I get the baseline grid to start at the very top of the frame? I assumed I could do it by using these settings.

However, that isn't working. The purple and green tabs have a paragraph style applied to them that includes snapping to the grids; the text does not. you can see that they are snapping to the first grid line 20pt below the top margin of the frame. That is not what I want. I want the top margin of the frame to be the first gridline.

Here are the paragraph style settings.

[Barb Binder]

You haven't given us the specs of the anchored images, Marie, and I suspect they are playing a part. Text this theory by removing them to see if the text will snap to the first gridline.

Have you considered building that shape into the paragraph style with shading? You can still change the colors.

~Barb

[MarieMeyer]

Which specs for the anchored images do you need to see?

[Barb Binder]

Marie:

You can see from my screen shot that InDesign can do what you want, but we can't recreate your file from the screen shot without the specs for the anchored frame (width, height, anchored frame settings) and the paragraph specs. If you want to stay with anchored frames, it would be quicker for all of us not to have to recreate your file, but for you could share one page of that document on dropbox, and then post a link to it instead. You can post the link here (public) or you can hover over my name and message me directly (private). If you are concerned about content, you can always replace it with placeholder text.

Before you do any of this, would you mind letting me know if you were able to delete the frame behind "abbey" and then snap the text to the top grid line, as I asked in my first post? That will help us determine if I'm on track with the anchored frame concerns, or if there is an issue with your settings.

~Barb

[MarieMeyer]

Here is a link to three pages:

Dropbox - SamplePages.indd

[Barb Binder · Accepted solution]

Hi Marie:

I'm glad you shared the file—it was not set up the way I was assuming it was from the screen shot.

The trick to using baseline grids is everything on it should be a multiple of the grid value. Your grid value is 20 pts, so you need to be using values of 20, 40, 60, 80, etc.

Your frame was 41.238 pts so it didn't fit on the grid and moved to the next line:

Make it 40 pts, and it does.

All values: leading, spacing, frames, etc. should follow that rule.

~Barb

[MarieMeyer]

I'm continuing to tweak this design. Those colored tab-shaped images are the thing that I want to snap to the grid. It looks as though their bottom margin is the part that "snaps". Can I change it so that it is the top margin instead?

[Barb Binder]

No. “Align to baseline” means to snap the baseline (the imaginary line that runs under all of the letters in the text) to the grid—your images are aligning because they are inline images on the tiny empty paragraph marker, which is itself snapping to the grid.

~Barb

[MarieMeyer]

Good to know. That error in my understanding was the source of a lot of my confusion.

Could I ask another? In this document, I set the frame for the colored tab shape images to 36pt high. But when I check them, they are 36.33pt . Dropbox - NewSample.indd

Why do they grow? They are from a PDF file, I use InData to import them.

[Barb Binder]

Hi Marie:

In the future, it's best to post new questions as new threads when they don't relate to the original question—in this case, baseline grids.

That said, I don't use InData so I can't help you with that. But I see you are using an Object style—you can set the height there for all of them.

~Barb

[Laubender]

MarieMeyer  wrote

… Could I ask another? In this document, I set the frame for the colored tab shape images to 36pt high. But when I check them, they are 36.33pt . Dropbox - NewSample.indd

Why do they grow? They are from a PDF file, I use InData to import them.

Hi Marie,

your placed PDF is 105 x 35 pt in size by 100% scaling.

Your frame that holds the PDF should be the same size with no fill and no stroke.

I see that the stroke weight of the frame is set to 1pt with stroke color [Paper].

Why? ( Because the used object style demands this! )

Regards,
Uwe

[amaarora]

Hi,

You can set the baselines relative to the text frames using the Text frames options(ctrl+b). Also, you have aligned “The first line” to the grid and which is what is happening.

Can you please check if using “Custom baseline option” in the Text frame option can help you...

-Aman