Best Practices For Working Across Multiple Documents In Adobe InDesign

So it is time to look at what are the best practices when you're working between a couple of documents. Some of them are easy, some of them we've kind of covered a little bit before. I want to put them all into one amazing video.

First up, stealing colors, and Paragraph Styles. So in my Swatches panel, I would like to go steal colors from 'Load Swatches'. Find a document, I'm using '05 Long Document', 'Section 2'. Bring it in, you can see down here, we brought in some new colors. The Google ones, the FedEx ones. It's a great way of just kind of reaching in and grabbing new colors. Same for Paragraph Styles, 'Window', 'Styles', 'Paragraph Styles'. I want to steal some Styles from that same document. I want to go to the 'Burger menu', go to 'Load Paragraph Styles', 'Section 2'. What do I want? I don't want you, I don't want you, I don't want you, so you can decide what you want. Click 'OK', and I've got the Heading and the Body Copy to get started.

Next bit of awesomeness, is I want to-- actually I'm going to close down that. I've got this document open, I want to open up a second document. 'File', 'Open', I'm going to steal stuff from one of the files I made earlier. I'm going to grab it from this one which was one of my Digital Publishing guys. So I've got it open. There's this stuff in here that I want to steal. Instead of tabbing between these two we can just go to this option up here. Say 'Arrange Documents', and you can see there's lots of different ways of doing this. I'm going to hit this option here. We'll go one on this side, one on that side. Really cool when you've got a bigger screen than I do. We'll close down 'Paragraph Styles'. You can see, I can just grab you, copy it, paste it. Grab you, drag it across, animate this other document.

So you're not impressed? I'm going to go back to this first option here. How to get you impressed? I'm going to open up that Digital Publishing one. So I've got my Home page, it's way up here. I'm also working on a page down here, I'm kind of going back and forth. We've used our shortcut called 'Command J'. You can go 'Page 1', 'Command J', 'Page 7', and jump back and forth that way. What we're going to do is use this little icon down here. It's quite similar to the last one except it splits the window in half, with this same document. I'm still only looking at my Digital Publishing.

So on this side, I'm going to zoom out so you can see the whole page. On this side, I'm going to zoom out so you can see this page here. Same document, just looking at different pages. Really handy when you are maybe checking the Contents page and looking further on in the document, or if you've got a Cover and Back Cover, and you just want to kind of see them, and how they relate to each other. Also works good, is say, on this side here, I can look at-- both looking at the Cover here, you'll see they're totally connected. Watch this, I'll move it, they move on both, though it's the same document, but what you can do, is you can be working in really tight here working on the Tracking, and just keeping an eye over here and a larger view, you kind of see what's happening.

So I'm going to turn it off by clicking that same icon down here. Now, I want to go back, I should have done this in the beginning because I've forgotten this step. That's okay, I'm going to go back to up here. I'm going to split them in half. Let's pretend we're back here. Now this new document over here, I want to steal lots of bits but I'd like him to be a little bit special. We're going to use something called the 'Content Collector'. So I'm going to zoom out over here, and instead of just copying and pasting across we're going to use this magic thing. It's called the 'Content Placer Tool'. Actually there's a Collector and a Placer, so we're going to start with the Collector.

What we're going to do is, I'm going to click on that. I want him, I want him, let's say I want this thing as well. That's what I want. I want this chunk of text. You can see them all appearing down the bottom here. Now I can switch the Placer, either up here, grab the Placer tool, or you can toggle between the Collector, and the Placer down here. The special option here is to create a link. When I paste this over here, it comes across. The image, I'm going to drag out. I can click on this first. I'm going to place my little image, and I'll click once for my text.

The difference is, can you see this locking icon? These are separate documents saved in different places but because they're linked, watch this, go over here, find, say the image here. I'm going to go through, actually I want to change the Stroke. I'm going to select it with the White Arrow to grab just the circle that I made. I'm going to say, you need to be the 'Maynooth Pink' now. Back to my Black Arrow, click over here, and what you'll notice is, can you see that little link icon changed into like a little caution symbol, to say, "That's been updated, and I'm linked." "You should know." You might not see it because you might be in the Preview mode, so 'W'. So make sure you're working in the Normal mode, which is the W key. And over here you can say, actually click on this. Updated. Cool, huh!

Now a circle, not that useful but in terms of text they can be super useful. You can have one kind of, like parent text document or you can have lots of other documents that link to it. It might be your pricing, or your address, or your disclosure statement. Something that gets really used lots. You can adjust it over here. Can't remember where it is now.

You are there, Shelves. Zoom in, and we've adjusted our Prices. It's now 55. Over here, click in here, it's updated, 55. Cool, huh! Now you can do something similar without the Content Collector, and it's probably how I do it a little bit more. So we're going to go from 'Arrange Documents', back to 'Single View'. We're going to go to 'File', 'Open', and in your folder, and in your 'Exercise Files', under '07 Multiple Documents', open up 'Stationery Set’.

Let's be on page 1, and you see this, my Letter Head, actually I've got a Comp slip on page 2, and business card on page 3. Let's be on page 1. What I'd like to do is use this address across all of them. I want them all to be linked. So instead of using the Content Collector we're going to use this method, so we're going to select it with the Black Arrow. We're going to go to 'Edit', and go to something called 'Place and Link'. We don't have to copy it first, for some reason, do that. You'll notice that the Content Collector just opens. So we are using our technique while using the icon. What I'm going to do here is, I'm going to click and drag out my Text, and I'm going to make it so it covers the whole Comp slip. And the cool thing about this, like before, I go through and change this, say that the Address was wrong. It's actually 145.

You'll notice down here, instantly as long as I'm not on my Preview button, I'm on Normal, enter the 'W' key, click here, and it goes and updates. Let's say we want to do something even more special. Same sort of thing, I'm going to go, like this. First one selected, he's going to be the Parent. I'm going to go to 'Edit'. Copy that link. Place that link even, come down to this one, and I'm going to place it in, but there's a few things I want to change. I want to change the Layout because I want it to be, first of all, Type tool. I want the Left Aligned, and I want to maybe resize this.

So I want to do some stuff to this thing. The only trouble with that though is if I go through now and update this top one here, so it's not Dan, it's Daniel. Come back down, you'll notice I get this arrow, click on it. Click 'Yes', and it goes back to all the same styling. The text came along, but the style changes. So what I want to do is open up my 'Window', 'Styles', 'Paragraph Styles'. Lots of Paragraph Styles in InDesign. What I'll do is delete this guy, go back to this first one here. I'm going to select it all. I'm going to give him a Paragraph Style because basically we're going to map them like we did earlier with the Word Styles. We're going to say, you my friend, are a Style for the Letterhead. Click 'OK', Black Arrow, with it selected, go to 'Place and Link'. Come down here, click once. And what we're going to do is restyle it.

Same sort of way, I'm going to drag it down, move it in, do some stuff to it. 'Type tool'. 'Right Align'. Black Arrow, make it even a little bit smaller, so it fits down there. Move it up a little bit, okay, I'm spending lots of time now. Let's do something really obvious, let's change the color. I'm going to pick the Turquoise from above. I don't like it, but it makes it really easy to look at, but it's going to make it really obvious. I'm going to select it all, and make a new Style. Paragraph Style 1, I'm going to call this one 'Business Card'. I'm not going to base it on the Letterhead, one I'm going to make it, its Lone Ranger style. That's not part of it, it's just something that I do, it's up to you.

Now what we can do is, this thing's linked. You can still see it there. What we can do, it's a little fiddly, I guess, go to 'Links' it's showing me the Parent, and this one over here. What I'm going to do is right click this guy, say 'Link Options'. What I'd like to do is this bottom one here, where you define a Custom Mapping. Click on 'Settings', and you want to say 'New Style Mapping'. The original one is going to be a Letterhead, and I'd like to map it down the bottom here to Business Card. Click 'OK'. Click 'OK'. Now when I update I go up to here, and I say, it's no longer daniel@maynooth, it's 'daniel@maynoothfurniture'. A website that doesn't exist.

Black Arrow, come down here. Comp Slip, it's going to update nicely. Now Business Card though, watch this. Click 'Yes'. It updated with 'maynoothfurniture', but also kept the style. I really like that one, that's great for having a Parent. Now you could do this across lots of documents like we did with the Content Collector, I can grab this one here, the Parent. 'Edit', 'Paste and Select'. Jump to a different document, paste it in here. And they are still linked across documents. Gets a little bit more complicated, and potentially troublesome when you've got lots of documents all connected to each other. if you do have do have something linked, and you're like "Actually, stop being linked" you can just go to your 'Links' panel, right click it, and say, 'Unlink'.

Sometimes you've got to do it twice, there's two options in here, the original, and this one, 'Unlink'. Nice! Now he is his own thing, and he is not connected to our original document. All right, so that is it on how to work effectively and efficiently across multiple documents in InDesign. All right, let's get on to the next video.