From the course: InDesign Secrets
189 Placing InDesign files - InDesign Tutorial
From the course: InDesign Secrets
189 Placing InDesign files
- You can place or import a lot of different file formats into an InDesign layout. You can place text files, of course. You can place images, but also QuickTime movies and sound files, all sorts of things. Even different pages of a PDF that you want to place. But I think that a lot of people don't realize that you can place an InDesign file, into another InDesign file. Let's take a look at that feature. Let's say for example, that we're working with this InDesign file, which happens to be a recent issue of InDesign Magazine. Which is of course, created in InDesign. Let's say that I'm going to do something like a sell sheet, or a brochure, touting the virtues of this magazine, or a how-to. How we put this magazine together. I'm gonna create a new document. And then I'm gonna place that InDesign file itself. Well you don't need to export these things to PDF, you don't need to take a screenshot. Just place the actual InDesign file. So I'll go to File, Place, and select that InDesign file. And I'm making sure that Show Import Options is selected, that's here, upper left. Because I want to show you some of the options when you place an InDesign file. They're very similar to when you place a PDF. You see a preview of all the pages. This document has a total of 16 pages, so it's just a section of the magazine, which is much longer. But I like how you can page through, and see previews, and choose which page it is that you want to place. So I'm looking for one that's a combination of text and graphics. This one looks pretty good. So I'm just gonna place page nine. I'm only going to place that previewed page. I wanna crop to the Page bounding box. If it had a slug or a bleed guide, I could also crop to there. And then I like this under Layers. This is something that I actually just recently realized that you can, hide or show the layers, in an InDesign file, just like you can hide or show the layers in a Photoshop file and an Illustrator file. That was kinda cool. So we're gonna take a look at that in a minute. Right now we're just going to show all the layers that were saved with the InDesign document, and click OK. It contains links to files that are missing or modified. That's perfectly fine with me for our purposes here. And I'm gonna place, maybe a large version of it. It we look at it in Preview mode, it's missing a border, so I'm going to give it a one point stroke. And of course, all InDesign files have to have at least image that has a drop-shadow. So I'll add a drop-shadow to that. But now, I'm getting a drop-shadow behind everything because it placed with transparency. So if this is happening to you, then you have to make sure that it is filled with Paper. So fill it with Paper instead of None. That way, you just get a shadow around the entire object. There we'll say, "Take a look at our current issue." And I'll make that a little larger. So I might place three or four pages from the magazine here. Now it didn't bring it in just as an image, it actually is linking to the whole InDesign file. If you look at your Links panel, you'll see that it's actually linking to the file, but it's missing this graphic. I'm not worried about it, at this point. But what I like about this, is that it's showing us the page number of the InDesign file. And any images that were on there, missing or not, or ones that need to be updated, would be listed under the reveal triangle. I'm gonna zoom in a bit, take a closer look. Let's say that I want this type to be a little bit more readable, in my linked version of it. So I'm gonna go back to the InDesign file, and find my way to page nine. And I'm going to just make this a bit larger, like that. And, you got all these images missing, but that's not really the point, we're just looking at linking to the InDesign file itself. So that looks good. And I'm gonna save my changes. And just as though you had saved changes to a Photoshop file you imported, when you save changes to an InDesign file that you import, it becomes out of date. So now that I want to, update it. And now that type on the top is more readable. Let's say that later I decide, you know what, I don't want that to appear at all, I just want the text, and the image, and the caption, I don't want to see this little, yellow blurb up here. I always go straight to the Layers panel, and I'm looking for the name of that layer, but of course it's not there. If you want to edit which layers are showing in this placed InDesign file, select the placed InDesign file, go to the Object menu, and choose Object Layer Options. Now you have to know what the layer name is. In this case I know it's called "extras." So I'm turning off, or making invisible, that layer. And then I'll just click OK, and there you go. So you do have a lot of control over placed InDesign files, especially if the designer used Layers. Which is always a good idea. I love working with these kind of placed images, they're like a cross between an image, and a document. You can export this to PDF, and the text will be selectable, even in the PDF. It's pretty cool. So the next time that you need to bring in samples of your publications, in a publication that you're creating, just place the actual InDesign file.
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Contents
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229 Batch converting ID files to current version with the Book panel6m 9s
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230 Getting around InDesign limitations6m 46s
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231 Creating better callout lines with effects and object styles5m 47s
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232 Swapping column and row information in tables6m 9s
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233 Making bigger text link targets4m 52s
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161 Keeping page numbers on top of master items3m 55s
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162 Adding automatic currency symbols in a table cell or before text3m 50s
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163 Make a pop-up footnote for your ebook3m 48s
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164 Deleting tabs at the beginning of paragraphs and applying a paragraph style3m 10s
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165 Five InDesign Presentation tips6m 28s
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111 Packaging images on the pasteboard3m 32s
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112 Automatically updating figure references for books6m 9s
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113 Adding Tool Tips to your form fields in InDesign3m 21s
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114 Setting poetry, flush left, center on longest line3m 54s
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115 Use bookmarks to navigate long documents in production4m 57s
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107 Using the same keyboard shortcut for two different commands with the Context feature5m 22s
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108 Making a text highlighter3m 33s
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109 Updating an interactive PDF without losing work done in Acrobat5m 30s
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110 Adding custom text at the beginning of each line automatically4m
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089 Three great Object Styles for any designer8m 1s
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090 Choosing alpha channel image transparency2m 25s
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091 Adding and reading metadata for InDesign files3m 25s
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092 Adding ALT tags to your images6m 59s
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093 How to Place & Link a text frame's text but not its formatting7m 4s
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094 Setting the baseline position of a caption2m 39s
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051 Five things that should be in every new file5m 19s
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052 Forcing EPUB page breaks with invisible objects6m 21s
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053 Understanding component information6m 39s
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054 Creating running heads using section markers4m 16s
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055 Making a font with InDesign using the IndyFont script5m 20s
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056 Finding where that color is used7m 17s
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047 Specifying an exact amount of space between objects5m 17s
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048 Fixing last lines that are too short8m 16s
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049 Creating web graphics from your InDesign artwork7m 20s
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050 Using “No Language” to suppress unwanted hyphenation, spell-checking, and smart quotes2m 48s
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037 Updating a linked table without losing formatting5m 18s
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038 Creating electronic sticky notes4m 49s
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039 Moving master page items to the top layer for visibility2m 48s
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040 Five guide tricks that will impress your coworkers6m 18s
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041 Letting InDesign add the diacritics4m 21s
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042 Using single-cell table cells for custom paragraph formatting6m 2s
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027 Creating running heads using variables5m 1s
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028 Live Caption tips and tricks8m 3s
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029 Making professional drop caps10m 37s
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030 Making two-state buttons in interactive documents5m 5s
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031 Moving pages from one document to another3m 15s
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032 Wrapping bulleted text around a curve5m 58s
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007 Selecting through and into objects using cmd-click and Select Above/Below5m 46s
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008 Some great tips and tricks for the Swatches panel9m 40s
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009 Saving down for backward compatibility with INX and IDML5m 54s
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010 Using the INX and IDML formats to fix problems4m 46s
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