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InDesign: Adjusting 'space after' for only last line of bulleted list (using paragraph style)

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
December 7, 2018
5 replies
12562 views

I have created a paragraph style for a bullet list. However, I want the "space after" amount for the last bullet in the list to be different by default than the "space after" amount for the rest of the bullets within the list. For instance, in a list of five items, I want bullets 1-4 to have a space after of "0.0625 in," but for the fifth (and final) bullet in the list, I want it to be "0.1389 in."

I've set the "space after" in my paragraph style to "0.0625 in" -- but I don't want to have to manually go back to every list to change the final line to the greater spacing I desire. Is there a way to customize a paragraph style in such a way?

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Correct answer Barb Binder

Hi Kristin:

In v 13 or earlier, define the bullets normally with desired space between the bullets:

Then select the bullets, and set the Span to Span All:

Then Alt/Opt click on the icon in front of Span All to open the Span Columns dialog box. You can define space for both before and after the spanned bullets:

If you are using paragraph styles, you can use Redefine Styles to update all of the bullet lists in your document.

~Barb

Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Community Expert

I use Space Before for my body-based styles, including bullet and numbered lists. Removing or reducing the space is all that is needed.

David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

A

Alex5D97

Participating Frequently

I am dealing with this and it is definetely not working! I need help!! I hate how bullets work on Indesign!

James Gifford—NitroPress

Legend

Bullets in ID are one of its most powerful features. Unless Barb jumps in again, let's walk you through it.

What exactly are you trying to accomplish, and what's not working?

If it's vertical spacing, here's a summary of all the above:

Set space above to the space you want between a prior paragraph and the first bullet.
Set space below to the space you want between the last bullet and the following paragraph.

Now your individual bullets are probably too widely spaced. So:

3. Set Space In-Between to the value you want in between each successive bullet. All inter-bullet spaces will collapse (or, if you set it that way, expand) to this value, leaving only the starting top spacing and the ending bottom spacing at the original.

Is that it?

A

Alex5D97

Participating Frequently

Are those paragraphs with the bullet list feature enabled, or a typed in "bullet - space - text"? Two very different things and just typing in the elements doesn't produce a formatted bullet list. You don't type the bullets in; the style applies them.

Create a few short lines of text.
Select them all.
Create a new style for them.
Edit that style and go to Bullets & Numbering.
In the drop-down list List Type, select Bullets.
Save the style.

You'll now have an automatically bulleted list, and all of the above information about spacing will apply and work.

These are bullets from the type menu /bulleted & numbered list/ apply bullets/ option. As you can see nothing I do fix the space on the spaces between the bullets or the indentation on the line below. you know? I am giving up, I already created a new document with freash styles, It seems to be working, I will redo my 20 pages, If you work for Adobe know that there are still a lot of things not working, earlier this week my ID didn't want to export a PDF not even after unistalled/Installed proces turning everything off kinda thing, I have so much work yet I need to be re creating stuff because this thing decides not to work. I have over 7 years experience using adobe and InDesign SUUUUCKS!

Barb Binder

Community Expert

Hi Keith:

You are absolutely right. In your situation, I would return to using the Span trick I explained at the top of this post.

~Barb

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training

keithconover

Inspiring

Unfortunately, all the documents in which I'm trying to deal with this have two columns per page, so can't use the Span spacing. 😞

I suspect the best might be to have my Bullet paragraph style with no extra spacing after, and then a Bullet with Space After style with Space After of one pica (my grid spacing) for the last bullet in a series.

I went through all my documents and, as appropriate, tagged end-of-list Bullet and Bullet-Indent-1 styled paragraphs with Bullet-with-Space-After and Bullet-Indenti-1-with-Space-After styles. Seemed to be pretty easy and no unexpected side effects. You can simply not apply the to the end of a list prior to a heading and that gets rid of the problem with too much white space between the end of the list and the following heading. I think I would recommend it, even if you don't have two columns.

kristenc72354486Author

Participating Frequently

Thank you! That worked!

I realized I also then had to make sure my footnotes were set to "span across columns," too, so that they continue to format correctly.

Thanks again for the fast help!

Barb Binder

Community Expert

Great! Glad I could help.

~Barb

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training

keithconover

Inspiring

Barb, you are really smart and know a massive amount about InDesign, and you have solved problems for me in the past. This variant of the above may be insoluble without InDesign changing, but…

How to you get the spacing to come out right for multiple levels of bullets without manually adjusting the spacing? If there were an option "Space Between Paragraphs Based on Same Style" that might work, so that you could adjust the spacing between more than one level of bullet, that would work, but it doesn't exist.

I tried making a new style "Bullets with Sub-Bullets" which worked when every Bullet had Sub-Bullets, but if the previous paragraph didn't have Sub-Bullets and had a paragraph style of Bullet, I got this:

There is also a problem that, if you have a bulleted list right above a heading that is formatted with Space Above (as most recommend as a best practice) then you get more space between the end of the bulleted list and the subsequent heading than you really need.

Thanks for any thoughts.

Barb Binder

Community Expert

Hi Kristen:

There is a new feature that addresses this specific issue in CC 2019 (v 14) and a work-around that is effective for a 1-column layout in earlier versions. Which version are you using?

We can explain the one that will work for you once you let us know your version.

~Barb

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training

kristenc72354486Author

Participating Frequently

Thank you! I'm on CC 2018, so still v13, I believe.

Barb Binder

Correct answer

Community Expert

Hi Kristin:

In v 13 or earlier, define the bullets normally with desired space between the bullets:

Then select the bullets, and set the Span to Span All:

Then Alt/Opt click on the icon in front of Span All to open the Span Columns dialog box. You can define space for both before and after the spanned bullets:

If you are using paragraph styles, you can use Redefine Styles to update all of the bullet lists in your document.

~Barb

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training

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