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Adobe InDesign CC - Essential Training

How do I update a Paragraph Style in Adobe InDesign?

Daniel Walter Scott

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Hi there, in this video we're going to look at adjusting our paragraph styles, doing things like clearing and redefining styles. It will all make sense in this video. Let's go and do it now.

So the first one, and the one I use the most is Redefining. Say I go into here, and actually I want to highlight this, but Roboto Bold-- actually I want to start using Roboto Slab. So 'Roboto Slab'. I'm going to use 'Roboto Slab Bold', click on him. So we've adjusted it. Now, what happens is, can you see here, it's still my sub-heading, but see this little + thing here, means that if I highlight this, no +, if I highlight this one, it means it's pretty much the sub-heading, but there are some additions you've done to it. Often, all you need to do is hover above it. Can you see, I can't really point at it, but you can see, there it says, 'Roboto Slab' is being adjusted. It will actually tell you what's been adjusted and you can decide, "Actually I was going to leave it like that," or, in my case, I'm like, "I like it, and I want it to apply it to all the style." So, I want to do something called 'Redefine Style'.

So what I can do is, with it selected, I right click it and I say 'Redefine Style'. Based on the selection I have now, you'll notice that that updated, that updated, all for me. As you're working, you make some more adjustments. You like this, but you want to change it, maybe to 9.5 because it's just not fitting. And then you can right click this, and say 'Redefine Style'. And you can see, all of it came along for the right. I'm going to 'undo' that, not sure why I did that.

Another way of doing that same thing is, if you have nothing selected and if I double click, say my first paragraph here, I can go in, and say-- I want to turn 'Preview' on, just so I can see it while I'm working. Go to 'Basic Character Formats', there's lots you can do in 'Paragraph Style'. We're going to be working with, and mainly use 'Basic Character Formats'. You can see in here, 'Roboto Slab' yes, that's perfect, that's perfect. But what I would like to do is, I'd like it to be 'Bold'. You can see, it's been 'Bold' up there. Let's click 'OK'. So that's a different way of adjusting it. You either redefine by changing it, highlighting it, right clicking it, redefining it, or have nothing selected, double click it, and then go and make your adjustments, it doesn't really matter. That's bugging me. Hyphen, grab my 'Type Tool'. 'Paragraph', hyphen gone, nice.

Now the last thing we'll look at is something called clearing overrides. That just means that, say I've made this, and there's been some-- I'm playing around with the 'Tracking', which is this space between there, say I'm going to make it really big. And let's say that it's adjusted, so you can see here, it's this, but there's a little + that says-- it's the same, except, you can see in brackets there, the 'Tracking' is at 320. That's a mistake. I'm like, "That's not meant to be like that. Why has that gone to +." So what I can do, is I can right click, or just use this button down here that says 'Clear Overrides', and all that it does, it says "Get rid of the things that aren't part of the original paragraph style."

So let's say, now that we've got this locked down and we like this, and we're going to use this throughout our long document and other documents, for this company that we're doing work for. So what we want to do is, add it to our 'CC Libraries'. So make sure we got the 'Green at Heart' library selected up here. And we got two ways. I can have this selected, click the + button, like we did earlier and I can say, I would like-- I don't want the 'Text Fill Color', he's already in there, but I want the 'Paragraph Style', and I can click 'Add'. There's my 'Green at Heart' sub-heading. Or you can do this, I'm going to select all of these guys. I don't want this 'Basic Paragraph', that's nothing. And I'm going to click this little icon here, it will go across.

Now the cool thing about that, remember is that, doesn't matter what document I have open now, all of these guys will come along for the ride. I've fortunately had something selected at the same time so it's applied 'Body Copy' to it. Back to 'Sub Heading'. Buddies, we're getting a hang of these 'Paragraph Styles', aren't we? They're super useful, and you're going to get documents that have them already, and you need to know how to adjust them and use them especially when you're working on longer documents. If though, you are a designer, and works on really small flyers, post cards, little social media posts, then you're probably not going to use 'Paragraph Styles' like you should, but when your text is so small, and you're doing so many custom stuff, everything's different, then there might not be any reasons to use 'Paragraph Styles', but as soon as you get into more than one page or consistent monthly newsletters then 'Paragraph Styles' are the way forward.