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How to change the color of a bullet

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I'm new to InDesign CS3. I've figured out how to create a bullet list, even change the bullet to something custom. But I now want to change the color of the bullets. I want to keep the text black, but have the bullets be a different color. Can someone point me to the method to do this.

Many, many thanks!

How to

BobLevineCorrect answer

Community Expert

Create a character style and assign it to the bullet.

Bob

genevievel726533

Participant

You can also go under Paragraph style and turn the bullet points into text so that way you can go through and individually change the color of your points as needed.

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BobLevine

Community Expert

While I appreciate the fact that you're trying to help, that is horrible advice. It will break the styles and any attempt to change the others will cause problem. Don't do it!.

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joshargh

Participant

Thanks for the walkthrough - I'm surprised by how difficult and unintuitive this was. Even Adobe's documention is unclear on how to format bullets.

I agree that they should be locally editable, for the same reason text is: quick and easy iterations. If I have to jump through hoops just to see how red bullets will look, it becomes a serious impediment to designing.

But if that's not doable, a style palette just for bullets would also be great. Bullets really are somewhat neglected right now, imagine if you could just open a bullets palette and change size, color, import a shape, change spacing/indenting, etc.

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BeeVee23

Participant

And I want to use a single paragraph style but have need to have the text on other colours than a white background. I can't add a white character style to this one para style because otherwise when my bulleted list *is* on a white background the bullets won't appear.

B

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Nilsy Nils

Participant

Thanks for the tip - worked great. Just to clarify, here are the steps for creating a bulleted list with red bullets and black text. You can, of course, swap out the colors to suit your needs.

Create a character style whose color is the desired bullet color (red in this case).
1. In Character Styles palette, click the "New Character Style" button.
2. Double click on the new character style to edit it.
3. Assign a name to the style. We'll use "RED" for this example.
4. Go to the "Character Color" option and choose the red swatch.
5. Click OK.
Create the Bulleted List Paragraph Style.
1. After typing out your bulleted list in black, select the entire list.
2. In the Paragraph Styles palette, with the bulleted list still selected, click the "New Paragraph Style" button.
3. Double click the newly created paragraph style.
4. Name your new paragraph style (ie. Red bullets, black text).
5. Go to the "Bullets and Numbering" option and click the dropdown labeled "Character Style" and choose "RED".
6. Click OK.
Apply the style to the bulleted list by highlighting the entire list and clicking the newly created style, ie. Red bullets, black text.

I hope this helps.

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CantStandGreed

Inspiring

Thanks for the tip explained step-by-step Nilsy Nils. I appreciated you took the time to list the process.

While being able to add such a reusable set of settings for character and paragraph is a great feature to have, it's truly a major pain having to go through it in edits and revisions. The ability to edit directly those attributes should be present by default with the ability to create a collection of character and paragraph styles as an addition to rather than a replacement of direct editing ability.

For Adobe it should be a clear sign of "UI/UX friendlyness problems" when it becomes necessary to go through reverse back flipping and secret handshakes, to accomplish something that should be the simplest of tasks which users must be able to accomplish by no even a 1-2-3 process, but a 1-2 one: 1) Select, 2) edit attribute! Just sayin'!

Cheers!

tfbkny

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Keep experimenting and creating.

M

Michael_Gianino

Inspiring

tfbkny, I'm not sure what you want.

tfbkny wrote:
The ability to edit directly those attributes should be present by default with the ability to create a collection of character and paragraph styles as an addition to rather than a replacement of direct editing ability.

What can't you do that you want to be able to do. Can you give a specific example?

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_tuqqer_Author

Participant

Ah, got it! Thank you for responding, Bob. Took me a bit to figure it out, but then I saw how under Paragraph Style Options, under the Bullets and Numbering, there's a dropdown menu for "Character Style."

Very cool. Thank you.

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