How Text Boxes Can Auto-Expand In Adobe InDesign CC With Auto Size

Hi there, in this video we're going to look at Auto Expanding text boxes. We've all had this problem, where we've got a title, we've duplicated it, we're going to put in another one but it is just 'Chairs & Benches'. It doesn't fit, and you grab this, and drag that out or link it another fixed box. Drama. Imagine though, you could transform this box, so when I paste into it, look at it, magically gets bigger, and smaller. It's called the Auto Size for text frames. Let's go and learn how to do that now in InDesign.

First up we're going to be starting a new project that we're going to be working on. Let's go to 'New Document', and then switch from 'Print' to 'Web' because this is going to end up being an interactive document. It's going to have animations and it's going to go out to some cool places for interactivity. Basically what that changes is the dimensions. We're going to be working in pixels instead of inches or centimeters. Size wise, we're going to make ours kind of full HD. So a kind of a normal, typical presentation from a projector type and size. So it would be really common to have neither of these sizes, it's 1920x1080. That will be a really common, just kind of like screen size. We're going to use Landscape. Pages wise, we'll leave it at '1' at the moment. 'Columns', I want to use 4 in this case, and the 'Gutter, I want to get right up to something big, like 55. The 'Margins', we get it quite big as well, 150 pixels all the way around. We don't use 'Bleed and Slug'. Let's hit 'Create'. Let's save it, and we'll stick it on to our desktop in the folder we've created, 'InDesign Advanced Coursework'. This one's going to be called 'Interactive Magazine'.

So first thing I want to do for our text boxes, is on page 1, I'm going to drag a text box that goes across two columns. And this one's going to be for Tables. I'm going to make it a lot bigger, using my shortcut, 'Command-Shift->'. Made it quite big, and I'm using Roboto Lite. And as a demonstration for this kind of auto text sizing I'm going to make that text box kind of fit relatively proportionately to the word 'Tables'. I'm going to duplicate this page and show you a little shortcut while we're doing it. I can make a new page, and just copy and paste it across, but if I grab this page, and drag it down to this little new page icon it makes a duplicate of it, exactly the same, so page 1 and page 2 look the same. But in here, I want to put in a longer title. So this one's going to be 'Chairs & Benches'.

The trouble with it is that it didn't fill out and that's always a problem in InDesign, right? It's that you're forever kind of dragging these out and making them bigger, and making them smaller. Imagine if there was a way to automatically size them. You can totally do that. Now with your Black Arrow, have your text box selected. Go up to 'Object', and go to one called 'Text Frame Options'. And in here, there's this third option here called 'Auto-Size'. By default it is off, what we're going to do is do it by width only, and we're going to push it from the left hand side. You kind of see those arrows, it's going to push left rather than expand both sides. I'm using my hands to describe this, you can't see my hands. We're going to go from the left, and push right. Let's click 'OK', and what that just means now is that when I start typing it gets bigger along with it.

It's just a really handy trick to turn on for especially titles like this, where you don't want them, you know, you don't have different sizes so I'm going to duplicate it again to our third option. And it's going to get smaller as well as wider. This one here is 'Shelves'. And we'll do one more, and this one's going to be 'Bedside Tables'. So Auto Text Frames work, both width and height. So if you've got a text box here, and you want it to get bigger depending on the text, if I go 'Type', and I go to 'Fill with Placeholder Text', and I make it smaller. I want to make another box, and it just needs to be smaller. It's over set, and all you have to do is, the exact same path. 'Text Frame Options', 'Auto-Size', and do 'Height Only'. I never use height and width, it does some weird stuff. I'm going to push mine at the top and I'm going to click 'OK' and you'll see, as I add more text, I'm going to copy and paste that. Gets bigger and smaller, deleting it gets smaller. Awesome!

Let's get on to the next video. Before we do that actually, there you go, don't need you. All right, now the next video.