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How to anchor existing objects? (Goal: reflowable Epub w placed art.)

Explorer ,
Oct 21, 2018 Oct 21, 2018

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I have intermediate Indesign skills.

I have an existing layout with text, images and captions. Every item has its own style. There are no anchors. The files were used to publish a print book.

Is there an easy way to anchor the existing placed images (and their captions) to their relevant text block?

(I kind of know the standard way to anchor: Insert text cursor, apply anchor, find and place an object -- something like that. I don't want to do this since all my objects are already placed.)

My goal is to export my files in the reflowable Epub format and have my objects (and their captions) appear in the right place in the flow of text.

Right now when I export as reflowable Epub the objects end up as a heap at the end of the text. And who knows what happens to their captions.

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correct answers 1 Correct answer

Community Expert , Oct 26, 2018 Oct 26, 2018

Make sure you have frame edges visible. You'll see a small square adornment on the frame in the upper right corner.

Grab it and drag it into the text frame.

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Community Expert ,
Oct 21, 2018 Oct 21, 2018

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Moving to InDesign EPUB forum

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Community Expert ,
Oct 21, 2018 Oct 21, 2018

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Anchor the images in turn to the relevant Paragraph.

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Explorer ,
Oct 21, 2018 Oct 21, 2018

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Right! That's my question. How do you anchor an already-placed image?

Is there a way to do something like click on the image and "load up with anchor!" then insert cursor into text and "drop anchor here!"

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Explorer ,
Oct 26, 2018 Oct 26, 2018

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Derek: "Anchor the images in turn to the relevant Paragraph."

Yes! Can you help? This is what I need to know how to do!

My images are already placed.

Thanks.

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Community Expert ,
Oct 26, 2018 Oct 26, 2018

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Make sure you have frame edges visible. You'll see a small square adornment on the frame in the upper right corner.

Grab it and drag it into the text frame.

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Explorer ,
Oct 26, 2018 Oct 26, 2018

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"Make sure you have frame edges visible. You'll see a small square adornment on the frame in the upper right corner.

Grab it and drag it into the text frame."

THANKS!

PS: Now I realize that I'll also want to anchor my captions to the related photo! I tried this using the "dragging the red-square" trick but it didn't work. I can drag the red-square of the caption into the text however. Though I can't tell which anchor will come first ... or which item will display first. I want the photo w the caption UNDER it. Whew... Sorry for the bother! Any idea?

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Explorer ,
Oct 26, 2018 Oct 26, 2018

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PPS:

I'm just dragging the caption red-square into the same space after I drag the photo red-square there.

I exported as Reflowable and it worked: the captions are displaying after the photos. BUT! They are only 1" wide. About one or two words wide. A long narrow vertical caption. Sheesh. What controls that? Width of a text block?

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Explorer ,
Nov 20, 2018 Nov 20, 2018

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PS: i decided to just cut'n'paste the caption text into the text frame below the photo anchor.

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New Here ,
May 24, 2023 May 24, 2023

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Thanks!  I was struggling to convert print version to epub, with 440 pages and about 50 images.  This is simple and quick and just saved me a lot of work.  I found the blue box as you said, although it wasn't all the way at the corner, but near it, and at first was dragging it into the image itself rather than the text below or above it.  Now I've got it.  Thanks again.

 

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Community Expert ,
Oct 26, 2018 Oct 26, 2018

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Do a couple of pages  at a time and check by exporting to Reflowable ePub 3. Once the images are anchored they don't even need to be in the exact position.

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Participant ,
Feb 21, 2021 Feb 21, 2021

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drag the little dark square to the desired paragraph symbol 

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New Here ,
Jan 02, 2019 Jan 02, 2019

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I am trying to anchor already placed images and also bring more into my text, usually inset on the right or left.

Sometimes when I "place" an image, or bring it in through the anchored object insert command, it does not have the little square box that allows me to anchor it and sometimes it does. Sometimes if I delete it and paste it back, it gets the box, sometimes it doesn't. What am I missing here.?

Also, when I anchor the images, often my graphic style settings disappear, like text wrap and basic feather, and sometimes they don't. I'm going a little bit nuts with a dissertation due tomorrow. What am I missing here?

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Community Expert ,
Jan 02, 2019 Jan 02, 2019

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Maybe a screen shot of a typical page might help us see the issue.

If it's for an urgent dissertation, maybe don't anchor the images if the final output is a PDF.

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New Here ,
Jan 02, 2019 Jan 02, 2019

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Thanks Derek, but this is only one round of revisions due. I may need to do more rewrites. I don't know yet how this will work when I export, as I am required to export not only to pdf but to MS Word, which I don't know well and usually seems to screw things up. The best I've found for that is to export to pdf, then open the pdf in Acrobat and export to Word, but it is not foolproof. I used to work in Quark Xpress and then learned InDesign, but each new iteration changes it and I am way behind.

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Community Expert ,
Jan 02, 2019 Jan 02, 2019

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PDF? Word? EPUB? And you expect to get a quality result to all of them?

Let’s just be clear…that’s not going to happen. The easiest export is PDF. It will be “pixel perfect.” Reflowable EPUB requires a lot of work to get right.

Word? You need to start out by sacrificing a goat. That’s like putting an egg back in the shell AFTER you’ve made an omelet.

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Community Expert ,
Jan 02, 2019 Jan 02, 2019

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Maybe you should start a new thread, and indicate your version of Indesign and OS, and spell out exactly what your brief is. At the moment it's confusing!

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Community Expert ,
Jan 02, 2019 Jan 02, 2019

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The latest edition of InDesign Magazine has an in-depth article on Anchoring Objects: https://indesignsecrets.com/

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Mentor ,
Jan 05, 2019 Jan 05, 2019

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From InDesign export to a formatted Word document?

[...]

[Stunned silence]

[...]

giphy.webp

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New Here ,
Jan 06, 2019 Jan 06, 2019

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Thanks to you all for your assistance. I was able to anchor my photos, after a couple of simple discoveries. One, that to get the little square to show on my photo, I have to click on the direct selection tool, not the selection tool, and also, that in order for my image to maintain its text wrap, and feather, I have to anchor to something to the left or above. If I anchor to anything below, I lose those. It also seemed to work best, though more work intensive, if I set the text wrap and feather separately rather than using object settings, before I anchored the photo to the text. I don't know that this is elegant and may only demonstrate my ignorance of the program, but I managed to get my dissertation submitted seven minutes before the deadline.

I did have a problem that all of a sudden I could not get the last pages to work and have not figured that out; had to submit the glossary and references as a separate document.f

As for the conversions, the best way I found when I researched was exporting from InDesign to pdf, opening the pdf in Acrobat Pro (can't do that in Preview on the Mac) and exporting to Word from there. I think it worked this time because of the anchored images(?) One of the photos didn't work — turned bright pink, but everything else looked pretty good. I don't know how well that works on a more complex project, but it worked OK for what I was doing.

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Participant ,
Dec 19, 2020 Dec 19, 2020

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https://youtu.be/5eEp6uIIjII

 

I show you how to anchor an image into the text in Indesign CC so it stays with the text when doing an EPUB export. This method forces the picture to stay where you want it in the text even though the image floats around on the Indesign layout. This will not affect where the picture appears in a PDF export but only fixes the position in an EPUB export in Indesign CC.

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