Using a paragraph style without changing colours

This is a really old thread here, but since it's been revived, if the point is to fit the copy and you have a type size that's readable, why not just set the frame fitting options to vertically justify?

Hi there,

I suspect this has already been addressed for the original OP, but I have to provide the insight here for any other like me searching for this fix:

Hey Ian. So what you're working on in ID doesn't actually have the property size that defines what color the text is? I actually have a grep that would deal with all of it, but based on the property size being in the text.

Thanks to everyone for taking the time to respond!

Unfortunately, unless I'm misreading, no-one's solved my problem.

I think I didn't provide enough information in my original post. The 2000 or so paragraphs are seemingly randomly coloured.

(There is actually a pattern: the colours indicate the size of the property owned by the people named in each paragraph: red = 8-20 hectares, green = 20-40 ha, and so on. For the unmetricated, 1 hectare = approx 2.5 acres. So for all intents and purposes they're random. The original file is generated in Excel, sorted by property size, coloured appropriately, re-sorted alphabetically, copied and pasted into Word, saved as either docx or rtf, then finally placed into indd.)

They're also listed alphabetically, separated by a large capital letter, hence

etc for 1995 or so more lines.

So I have a paragraph style for the individual letters which I apply 26 times (takes a few minutes but no biggie) and what I want is a paragraph style for all the rest that ignores colours.

I could have 4 different paragraph styles, one for each colour, but that would be a nightmare to apply. I would have to go through the list and apply the red paragraph style to the reds - up to 500 times, then the greens, and so on. If they were in 4 contiguous blocks of colour that would be no problem, but they're in alphabetical order, not font colour order.

I thought I'd solved the problem thus:

Initially I formatted one paragraph as I wanted, then highlighted it and created a style based on that paragraph. That failed because it applied the colour of that paragraph to all paragraphs.

So I highlighted enough paragraphs to include all 4 colours and created a style based on that. At first I though it worked, but when I applied that style to the whole document, most paragraphs retained their original colours, but some, at random, changed. So that didn't work.

I tried applying [none] Character style first, but that didn't help.

I've tried having 4 different character styles, but, like having 4 different paragraph styles, that's impractical because it has to be applied on a line-by line basis (or perhaps several contiguous lines of the same colour), ie, hundreds of times.

A couple of respondents mentioned scripts and/or GREP. I know of their existence, but my skill set doesn't stretch that far!

To summarise: I want a paragraph style that doesn't affect colour.

(<rant> This should be dead simple. And as I said in my original post, this is something that Macromedia Freehand did out of the box. In moving from ancient FH to modern Indesign/Illustrator, I expected progress, not regress!</rant>)

For those who are still awake and keen, here's a link to an extract from a genuine file as seen in the pic above:

Microsoft OneDrive - Access files anywhere. Create docs with free Office Online.

If your colors are not a repeating pattern, then use 1 paragraph style for everything, then 4 character styles (1 for each color). Depending on what the color signifies, you may be able to use GREP to apply the colored character styles (Like if all people from Nowhereville get a red color, you could use a GREP style to do this for you automatically).

If they are a repeating pattern, then yes, you can use Next Style.

Apologies - early morning and no coffee - I see the issue now

Setup your colours in and name them Blue, Green, etc. Character Styles

Set your Character Colour in each of the Character Styles

Setup 4 paragraph styles - and Para 1 next style is Para 2, and Para 2 is next style Para 3.

In the paragraph styles for Para 1 - set up the Nested Style to be the character style you want (colour) for the paragraph

In the paragraph style for Para 2 - set up the Nested Style so the character style is the colour of the paragraph

(the above is assigning the character colour from the character style)

Sample file attached. Select All - then in the Paragraph style panel right click Paragraph 1 and select Apply and Apply Next Style.

http://s000.tinyupload.com/?file_id=00423112941894786715

Hi,

It would be really easier to just select the story containing the text and play a script that increases/decreases the global leading until the "perfect" result! [+/-0.001 point leading].

… but of course, you can do it manually!

That will just take you a little more time! …

Best,

Michel, for FRIdNGE

Why do you really need a paragraph style to fix this. You can manually select all the texts (I assume, your entire document will have the same kind of text) and change the size or leading manually in control panel until the texts fit within the space.

If you still need to have a paragraph style then I think the suggestion given by Eugene Tyson is great but you need to have a base/parent style created before creating four paragraph styles and then you will have to create these four paragraph style based on the parent style (again 'based on' feature is very handy). Changing the size and/or leading in the parent style will affect all the child styles.

Hope this helps.

Create 4 paragraph styles with the colours you need, then use the "Next paragraph style" function in the Paragraph Styles you create.

https://indesignsecrets.com/indesign-how-to-switch-paragraph-styles-automatically.php

Search for more tutorials on Next Paragraph Style too. it's a very handy feature.