How To Make A Multi State Object In Adobe InDesign CC

Hi there, in this video we're going to look at something called a Multi State Object. And what it means is, I can click on this button and cycle through all these lovely images. That's a Multi State Object, let's look at how to make that now in InDesign.

So let's make that happen, we're going to work on the Bedside Tables page, it's page 5. So, first of all let's bring in some images we want to toggle through. So we're going to go to 'File', 'Place', or 'Command D' on a Mac. 'Control D' on a PC. And we're going to bring in Wood1, Wood2, and Wood3. You don't have to bring them all together in one go, but that can be handy. Click 'Open'. And I'm going to click once, twice, three times, just clicking on the page. I've got mine relatively the right size just to save time over this, all trying to crop them, because I've got them all in the same place, you might not. You might have to line them, you might have to drag them so they all line up on top of each other.

So once that's happened I'm going to select them all by dragging a box over all of them. Then I'm going to line this up kind of underneath here. So that's where I want them to be. So with them all selected still, we're going to go to our 'Object States'. And we're going to click on this little new 'Multi State Object' button. And you can see, those are the three states we get to toggle through. You can see, I can switch through them, like this. So I'm going to have State 1 as my first state. And what I'll do is I'll give this a name. You can have more than one Multi State Object on a page. I'm going to have this one called 'Wood Types'.

So now we need a button to control them. And what we're going to do is we're going to create a button down the bottom here. We're going to drag it like a little colored box here. I'm going to add some Type to it. Maybe Type box, I'm going to say 'Click for Wood Types'. Probably not my best Button naming. I'm going to make it as well, white, and Paper. So that's going to be my Button. I'm going to group them together. So my Button is either the Type or the Colored box. Now we need to get this thing to work. It's a problem there, a little bit, I want something down a little bit.

So to make them work we first need to make them into a button. So click on 'Buttons and Forms', 'Type', it's going to be 'Button'. And what I'd like to do is, we should give it a name. I always call mine button at the beginning. This one's going to be 'Wood Types'. Just, because we end up sometimes with lots of buttons, and not sure who's who. So, under 'Event', mine's going to be, when it's clicked, the action is going to be 'Go to State'. Actually, really 'Go to Next State'. Basically it's just kind of-- whenever it's clicked, it's going to go to the very next state, and the very next state, and the very next state. So it's going to be like a toggle. You could in this case have three buttons, and instead of saying 'Go to Next State', you can say, go to a specific state. So State 1, or State 2. I'm going to delete that. I just wanted to toggle through, go to Next State.

If I've confused you, let's just give it a go. So let's go to our 'EPUB Interactivity', hit 'Play'. Now I can click on this button, and it just cycles through them all. Cool, huh! So there's my three different Wood Type options. To make it happen you have two separate things. You have this, which is your Multi State Object, then you have some sort of control. And in our case, it is just this button here. It says, go to the next one, please. One of the options in there was to go to previous. You could have a forward and a back button. So that's it for Multi State Objects. Let's get on to the next video.