Optical margins—how to set as default

[Susan Culligan]

I would like to have Optical Margins as a default, if this is possible. I typeset trade books, and there are several standard elements besides body type (of course), figure captions, pull quotes, among others. I want to avoid having to scroll through the document setting Optical Margins for the extra elements. 

Any thoughts?

[rob day]

You can set the default for new text frames by closing all documents, setting the desired Story Options and restaring ID. Story Options can also be set in an Object Style or ignored in a Paragraph Style’s Indents and Spacing.

[Susan Culligan]

Thank you for your quick response! But I can't find anywhere to set up
Story Options or new text frames when no document is open.

🤓
--

[Peter Spier]

Open the Object Styles panel and edit the Basic Text Frame object style.

[Susan Culligan]

Thanks for your help. This worked in a new document but not in a document
that I'd copied from another, emptied out, saved as idml, then saved as
indd. Oh well, I'll play around with it and see if I can get it to work in
a new text frame in an existing document.

Cheers,
Susan--

[Eugene Tyson]

Can you please turn off your signature if replying by email - as your person information is showing up on the forums - I've removed the personal information from your posts.

Thanks

[rob day · Accepted solution]

 but not in a document that I'd copied from

You copied the story OMA setting over from the existing document. You can turn OMA on for all stories in a document via a script. This will set all the stories’ Optical Margin Size to 12pt:

var os = 12;
var s = app.documents.item(0).stories;
var i = s.length; while (i--) s[i].storyPreferences.opticalMarginAlignment = true, s[i].storyPreferences.opticalMarginSize = os;

[Diane Burns]

With no document open, go to Type menu > Story  and check "Optical Margin Alignment" to ON.

For any new document you create, Optical Margin Alignment will be set on new text frames.

In an existing document, de-select all text frames, then set Optical Margin Alignment on. All new text frames in that document will have it turned on.

Or set in Paragraph Style as Rob described.

Is this not what you were looking for?