You know how we can have running headers say for chapters, and as we enter a new chapter and change its title it automatically updates the text on subsequent pages of the chapter... Can we do the same with colours? Is it possible to set a colour as some sort of variable? Context is:I've got a document that I have created and it uses style sheets quite heavily, and those style sheets for headers, crossheads, highlight text etc are set up with a character colour of red.Within the document are six chapters and my client has decided that each chapter should have a different colour. Only one chapter remains red!I now need to go through each chapter and manually colour every bit of text that is red to change it to another colour based upon the chapter colour.I have got to do the same thing in around a dozen different languages! Surely there's a way of automating colours used throughout a chapter. If this isn't possible in InDesign, how would you guys go about simplifying this process so the job isn't so arduous when it comes to having to lay out the other languages? Thanks in advance.

Known Participant

Question

Running headers sort of thing, but with colours

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
October 18, 2023
3 replies
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You know how we can have running headers say for chapters, and as we enter a new chapter and change its title it automatically updates the text on subsequent pages of the chapter...

Can we do the same with colours?

Is it possible to set a colour as some sort of variable?

Context is:

I've got a document that I have created and it uses style sheets quite heavily, and those style sheets for headers, crossheads, highlight text etc are set up with a character colour of red.
Within the document are six chapters and my client has decided that each chapter should have a different colour. Only one chapter remains red!
I now need to go through each chapter and manually colour every bit of text that is red to change it to another colour based upon the chapter colour.
I have got to do the same thing in around a dozen different languages!

Surely there's a way of automating colours used throughout a chapter.

If this isn't possible in InDesign, how would you guys go about simplifying this process so the job isn't so arduous when it comes to having to lay out the other languages?

Thanks in advance.

How to

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Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

Split your chapters into a Book?

Separate INDD file for each chapter.

FRIdNGE

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Just For Fun, 10 years ago!

https://youtu.be/O_wugBSs980?si=b8Hgl7PRZVUUjw5n

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M

MotorIBAuthor

Known Participant

That's interesting. How have you acheived that?

I assume that's driven by a style sheet connected in some way to a variable, but I'm wondering if the heading 'Colour Red' is the running header and that's why it appears on every subsequent page. I'm wondering if it would work with page headings, subheadings, crossheadings etc that aren't actually running headers.

James Gifford—NitroPress

Legend

There may be some scripting approach that might handle this, but the only technique I can think of (and have used) is to assign a color name to all of the chapter documents, use it as the highlight color for the desired elements, and then change it in each chapter.

For instance, create a color swatch named HIGHLIGHT, and make it some distinctive color like Magenta. Lay out your book, get it into something like final form, and use HIGHLIGHT as the color for (say) running heads, chapter titles and numbers, footnote separator lines, paragraph separator characters, drop caps, etc. Then, in each chapter, change HIGHLIGHT to some different (and hopefully, attractive and coordinated) color.

This might be a problem when you synchronize book chapters etc., but you can work around that with the sync settings.

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