Indesign feels like microsoft excel but worse

[anepanne]

Object Styles, Paragraph Styles, I'm really trying to get a grip on them but my god.

Simple example. I have an image frame and a text frame. The text frame contains the caption for the image. I want the text frame to sit at the bottom of the image frame. The image frame is a placeholder, because each page will have different size images. So the captions need to move with the image dynamically. 

Anchored object? Group? I tried and at some point, the caption text remained underneath the image, even when scaling the image frame! But what about the image and text frames underneath them? I just want to make certain that the margins between each frame are the same for every page, and that I can increase a margin that is then corrected on all pages equally...editing in html is more user friendly than this. Everything is jumping around and it just reminds me wrestling with excel.

[Randy Hagan]

You need to check into the Text Wrap panel, and its capabilities. It lets you set distance away from selected element(s) with precise numerical control. You can learn more about how it works through this link, and the follow-on links associated with that help page. 

This should get you up to speed, and get you the results you want. And if you have any other questions about how InDesign works/doesn't work how you'd like, please feel free to come back and ask. There are lots of sharp people around here who may be able to lend a hand.

Hope this helps,

Randy

[anepanne]

Hi Randy, thanks for your suggestion, but it's not quite what I'm after. Please read my reply to Dave Creamer's comment.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

As far as the image frame and text frame having the same margin (I'm interpeting that as the space between them), butt them together at the bottom of the image frame and the top of the text frame. That will make it easier to align them. Then use text inset to push the text down from the top of the text frame. 

[anepanne]

I dont quite follow what you are suggesting? To simplify my question, let's say I have two empty frames and I want the top edge of the bottom frame to align with the bottom edge of the top frame. So when I scale up the top frame, the bottom frame should move down and vice versa. I don't want to have to nest things in groups. I just want the top left corner of the bottom frame to be attached to the bottom left corner of the top frame.

[rob day]

I just want the top left corner of the bottom frame to be attached to the bottom left corner of the top frame.

Hi @anepanne , Sounds like you want to align the objects—there is the Align panel. There is also a captioning tool for setting automatic metadata captions—see Object>Captions>Caption Setup...

For an alignment example, here I have a caption text frame that I want to align to the bottom of an image frame. I’ve set Align to to the margins, set Distribute Settings Use Spacing amount to 0, then clicked the Align Left Edges and Distribute Vertical Space buttons:

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

If you want the photo/caption to flow with the text, you need an anchored or inline group. 

Align image bottom to caption frame and group them so you can resize them at the same time. 

Use text inset to keep the caption away from the image. The inset amount will stay the same when resized. You can double-click on either frame to isolate it from the group for individual editing.

[BobLevine]

And don't forget about the gap tool if you need space between objects.

[Eugene Tyson]

Typically if I want text and images with captions to flow with the text, I'll put them in a table within the text. 

So a 2 row 1 column table. 

In top row put the image

In the bottom row put the caption (or anchor the generated caption if that's what you're doing?)

Not it's in the table, the table flows with the text. 

Just in the Table Options set them to Keep With Next Row - https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/formatting-tables.html#:~:text=To%20keep%20the%20selected%20r....

Then you can resize your image without having scale the text - no need for them to be grouped. 

Once you do one image/caption table you can reuse them in other places.