Sharing Paragraph and Character Styles Across Multiple Documents

[defaulttneym2aephep]

For years I have been trying to figure out how to share a single set of Character and Paragraph Styles across multiple documents/templates. For our publications, we use two different templates for two different publications. The character and paragraph styles are identical in both of these two templates. But, as it stands, every time I tweak one or the two templates, I then have to remember to open the other one and apply the same tweak to both templates. Is there not a way to have a third file of some kind which holds all the styles and link it to the two templates? Thanks for your feedback!

[Eugene Tyson]

Put them into a book file - then you can choose one to be the Sync file - and it will update them.

https://www.bookdesignmadesimple.com/using-the-book-feature-in-indesign/#:~:text=Select%20all%20the%....

[Peter Spier]

Or just open the other template and choose Load Styles from one of the Style menus...

There is no way I'm aware of that will automatically update the styles without your intervention, which to my mind is a good thing.

[Diane Burns]

Doing a book or using Load Styles are good solutions.

If you can drop both templates in a Book, that will come closets to what you want to do.

But if that's not practical for whatever reason,  to expand a bit on Peter's reply, the trick is to keep track of which file has the changed style. When I've had this come up in projects, I've tried to keep one file as the "master" template, but this may not be possible in your workflow. Loading styles is an extra step, but a simple one.