InCopy Settings to InDesign

[jay_9092]

Greetings!  I teach InDesign in a public high school.  I am creating a collaborative assignment where one student creates a page in InDesign, their partner edits text in InCopy, and then the text is placed on the InDesign page.  We have no shared server due to security and privacy issues, so the file portability will be via Google Drive or emailing as an attachment.  Here's my InCopy/InDesign question:  Is there a way to make the Paragraph Styles created in InCopy work properly in InDesign?  When the formatted InCopy text is placed the styles created in InCopy show up in the InDesign Paragraph Styles panel, but when clicked they do not change the text.

Thanx,

Jay

[BobLevine]

That's not how it works. If the text is already in InDesign the InDesign users exports it for editin in InCopy. The InCopy user can open the INDD file in InCopy, check out the story, edit, then check back in. If you're creating content in InCopy and then placing it in InDesign, once placed InDesign takes over.

This requires a shared environment and a Google Drive folder that is fully synced to all users' harddrive should work for this. 

From my soapbox: You need to do more to learn this workflow yourself before you start teaching it so feel free to keep asking questions.

[Frans v.d. Geest]

Correction here Bob, you can start in InCopy, write an article, and place that in InDesign. So you *can* start in InCopy. That said, the OP question is also not clear to me on the used workflow...

[jay_9092]

Yes, that was what I was trying to accomplish.  The thing is, here in a public school setting, there is no shared server.  My students need to complete the file in InCopy and then send the file to a classmate via email or Google Drive.  Classmate then downloads the file and places it in InDesign.  This does not allow for checking in/out or linking of the files.  It's not the purest form of the workflow, but it does give the students experience in collaboration.

[BobLevine]

Now that we have that cleared up. Again, once you place that ICML file in InDesign, the file is automatically linked and the InDesign user has to check it out to work on it but the styles as defined in InCopy will be part of the InDesign file. That said, if you duplicate the name of an already existing style in InDesign, the InDesign definition will over ride the InCopy definition.

If you have frame edges enabled in InDesign, you will see the InCopy adornment indicating that the content can be checked out as shown in this screenshot.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@jay_9092

If your students are using InCopy as a WYSIWYG / Rich Text editor - why not use WORD or Google Docs? 

[BobLevine]

Which I did point out because the question wasn't clear.

[Mike Witherell]

By the way InDesign and InCopy are designed, the paragraph styles are made and edited in InDesign and applied to the text. The text is exported to the outside folder so that InCopy can open it and edit the text, but generally speaking, not the style. The style can be applied, but is not made in InCopy. 

[BobLevine]

Hey Mike,

But if you do start the process in InCopy you can define those styles and they will come into InDesign when you place the IDML. Of course, from that point on, InDesign rules the styles pretty much.