styles in all documents without template

[jay fresno]

Is it possible for Styles to appear in all new InDesign documents without creating a template?

Not all of my documents are the same size, etc, so I don't want to use a template. But I want my Styles to appear in each new document. 

[BobLevine]

You can just import them from a template document. This can be done from any of the styles panel menus.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

No. One of the things InDesign lacks that is common in other page layout apps is any kind of master style sheet — or, for that matter, any discrete 'style sheet' at all.

You can open a new document and import styles from a source or template doc of your choosing, though. Click on the hamburger/3-line menu of the Paragraph Styles pane and click Load Paragraph Styles. Pick the source doc. If you want to load Character Styles, do the same from the Character Styles pane menu. Or, most likely, choose Load All Text Styles in both locations.

You can do the same for Table and Cell styles from that pane, and Object Styles from, well, that pane.

The only way I know to load all these things is to open a saved template document with all your settings and styles in it, but that also hauls in page layouts and Parent pages... which may or may not be suitable to each new project.

This isn't something I use a lot, so Barb or Bob may have a better trainer-focused approach, but that's one of ID's big lapses, to me — that reusing styles is not a straightforward thing.

[BobLevine]

I think that pretty much covers it.

[Barb Binder]

Haha! How did you know I was composing an answer, James? 😂

~Barb 

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Didn't, but if you were surveying things from your perch, I knew you would. Usually to bring up a more global feature I've overlooked. 🙂

[Barb Binder]

Hi @jay fresno:

As per Bob's suggestion, I just load styles from one document to another.

But, to address your specific question, yes. Anything you add to InDesign with no documents open will be the default for all new documents. If you re-create your styles with no files open, and they'll be in all future documents.

The other option is to remember that you can add paragraph and character styles to a CC Library. So if you open a file that contains the desired styles, you can click the plus button at the bottom of the CC libraries panel and add those styles. You can then use them in any document. As you use them, they will be added to the styles panel in whatever file you are using.

~Barb 

[Barb Binder · Accepted solution]

OK back with a combination approach (lots of disruptions today): close all open files, open one or more Styles panels and then load your styles from a document that has them defined. Now you don't have to re-create them, and they will be in all future files. 

~Barb

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

This is in serious *gobsmack* territory. I really, really should know, and if not should have absorbed from all the related discussions, that styles are something that can be loaded into the default environment like other settings, separate from any document. But that detail has eluded me.

I can see where it may not be a solution for everyone, especially those who create and work with a wide variety of docs, but for those who tend to work in a more defined, linear manner, having a few dozen base styles to draw on right from Ctrl+N is a nice feature.