Adobe InDesign CC - Essential Training

How to change MM to Inches & changing UK to US dictionary in InDesign?

Daniel Walter Scott

Download Exercise Files

Contents

Certificates

We’re awarding certificates for this course!

Check out the How to earn your certificate video for instructions on how to earn yours and click the available certificate levels below for more information.

You need to be a member to view comments.

Join today. Cancel any time.

Sign Up

Hi, everyone. In this video, before we get started making this lovely flier, we need to adjust our measurements. By default, often InDesign comes with the measurement of 'Picas'. It just means that whenever-- you see this box at the top here, it's in 'Millimeters', yours might be set to 'Picas'. When I make a rectangle, all the measurements are set to that. Or if you're just switching from Imperial to Metric.

So, let's go and change it. On a Mac, it's under 'InDesign CC', down here to 'Preferences', and then, down to 'Units & Increments'. If you're on a PC, it's similar, it's under 'Edit', then 'Preferences' is down here, it will have 'Units & Increments'. So on a Mac, that's where I am. All you need to do here is, we're going to change our 'Horizontal'. It might be on 'Picas', and we're going to switch it to 'Millimeters'. We're going to do this course in 'Inches just because most of the people watching my videos are American based, but you can switch it to 'Millimeters. I'll show you a cool trick while you're working to interchange between the two.

The other thing we might do here is, if you're going from millimeters to inches you might want to change the default dictionary as well. So down here, where it says 'Dictionary', just make sure you're on the most relevant dictionary. I'm on 'English USA', you might have to switch yours to the one just up, which is 'UK English', or 'Chinese', whatever your dictionary is. Let's click 'OK'. You can see up here, that little box I showed you earlier is now in 'Inches'. When I try and draw a rectangle it comes up in 'Inches'.

Okay, quick easy short video. Let's go off and start making this flier from scratch.