How To Create Nested Styles In Adobe InDesign CC

Hi there, in this video we're going to look at how to create a Nested Style. And what it's going to do is, I'm going to click in this paragraph anywhere, and I'm going to apply the Style that I've created for Feature, and magically, it's going to also apply a Character Style to all words right up until this colon. Super useful for a numbered list, or in our case, this Featured list. Let's go and learn how to do that now in InDesign.

So for this to work, let's open up a file that I've got made for us. It's in '06 Styles', open up 'Nested Styles', click 'Open'. Open up your 'Paragraph Styles' panel. It's under 'Window', 'Styles', 'Paragraph Styles'. Now our Nested Style, remember, is a way to connect Paragraph Styles and Character Styles together automatically. So you need both of them to exist first. So, first of all we're going to work on this Features list, and what you'll notice about it is that ‘Build to last’, and the colon ':', same with Timeless. So I would like a Style that automatically made this kind of bold and green.

So we need two things, we need a Paragraph Style, so I'm going to select all of this, and I'm going to say, let's make a new Paragraph Style. Even though there was a Body Copy 1, they have to be separate. Double click 'Paragraph Style 1', this one's going to be my 'Feature'. 'Feature Style', based on, I'd like to just go back to my 'Paragraph Style'. Click 'OK', it's up to you, that doesn't really matter. It's just my personal preference.

So we've got a Paragraph Style now, we're going to create a Character Style. So with nothing selected, go to 'Character Styles'. I'm going to create a new one. Double click it. This is going to be my 'Feature Character Style'. I should have called the other one Paragraph Style. And we're going to go to 'Basic Character Formats', and all I want to do is make it 'Bold'. And I'd like it to make the Character color our-- actually I don't have that green one, different document. I'm going to make mine the awful green. Just to prove a point. Click 'OK'. Nothing really happens. I've got a Paragraph Style over here called 'Feature Style', and then I've got a Character Style that's just as bold, and ugly green.

Now is when we connect them up. So nothing selected, go to Paragraph Styles, double click 'Feature Style'. And the Nested Style connects them in here. And some of the 'Drop Caps and Nested Styles'. So they get connected through the Paragraph Style. And we say, 'Nested Styles', that's 'New Nested Style'. Click there. Where it says 'None', I want this Nested Style to apply the 'Feature Character Style' that we made. That's the bold and ugly green. And now if I kind of click around, you'll see, preview's on, and at the moment, it's doing it all automatically through one word. So just going to the first word, applying the green and bold. That might work for you, you might just have the first word, and you need to make it that green and bold. So just a play at the Paragraph Style, and that will work.

What I'd like to do, is I'd like to go-- actually just so you know, you can go up to '2' words, click out. You'll see, it goes 2 words, up to you, but I would like to go through one, and instead of words you can go through here, and look at the different options. You might have a tab that you want to break across. Might be a certain amount of 'Letters' or 'Digits'. You go through the first three digits. You might have an 'Em Space', so we're on Em Space. I am going to actually delete the word 'Words', and actually use my own character, and put it in a colon, because that matches there, click off.

So what it's going to do now is, it's going to apply that Character Style through to the colon. This becomes really nice when I'm doing something else, so 'Graceful Design', click on this one here, I'm going to say, I want you to be a 'Feature Style'. Ah, it's broken. Because it's looking for that colon, it can't find it. I'm going to put in the colon here. Awesome, huh! So that's a Nested Style. And it's just a way to automatically connect Paragraph Styles and Character Styles, and in particular, it uses the beginning of the Paragraph as its starting point.

Now I want you to, on your own, create a new Paragraph Style for this group. And instead of using the Character for colon to stop it, I want you to change it and go and use this open bracket '('. The only difference would be, there was an option that said 'Through to', you're going to say 'Upto', because we want it to stop before it gets here. All right, so that's how to create a Nested Style in InDesign.