From the course: InDesign Secrets
196 Working with dynamic layouts - InDesign Tutorial
From the course: InDesign Secrets
196 Working with dynamic layouts
- InDesign is a page layout program, and I believe that page layout, at its core is all about managing the relationships among all the different elements of your page. But sometimes it seems like InDesign forces you to do a lot of manual work to keep all those relationships going. For example, on this page I have a very simple relationship between the images and the text frame. I want these images, these captions and this line to move down the page as this text frame up here expands as I add text. Now, InDesign should be able to do that for me, right? And indeed it can. Here's how we make it work. First I need to turn on Auto size for this text frame. To do that I select it on my page, go to the object menu and then chose text frame options. Or press Command+B or CTRL+B on Windows. Now I'll press Command+3 or CTRL+3 on Windows to jump over to the auto size tab. You could just click on that tab if you want to but using a keyboard shortcut's more fun. Now in order to make this text frame grow as I add text or shrink when I remove text, I need to turn auto sizing on. And I'm gonna set this to height only. And, I'm going to have it grow from the top down. That's this top button here. Than means anchor the top and let the bottom flow up or down as necessary. And when I click okay, it doesn't look like anything's changed, but in fact, that is now going to auto size as I add or remove text. But the question is, as I add text and that text frame expands, how can I get these other objects, that line these images and these text frames to move down the page too? So the answer is, to anchor them into the text frame itself. The first step in doing this is to select all of these objects and group them. I'll just press Command+G or CTRL+G on Windows. Next I want to anchor them into the text frame above. To do that I'm gonna use the selection tool in the tool panel. And then I'm going to drag this little blue box, see the one up here in the upper right corner? I drag that up into this text frame. And I'm gonna drop it, could be anywhere but I'm gonna put it right at the very beginning of that story. Now that group of objects doesn't move but the square turned into a blue anchor symbol. By the way, note that this in only blue because the current layer color is blue. If these objects were on a different layer it would be Red or Green or something else. Now we need to tell InDesign how the anchored object should behave. To do that I could go to the object menu and then chose Anchored Object and then options. But I like right clicking, I like that context menu. So I'm simply going to right click on top of that object, that group. And I'm gonna chose anchored object, options. Now inside of this dialogue box, which I admit looks kind of confusing, we need to tell InDesign what part of the anchored object, that group, should be positioned, and based on what part of the text frame. Now in this case I want to position the upper left corner of this group. So I'm going to click on the upper left corner of the Reference Point icon here. Next I need to specify what the anchored position should be. I'm gonna make sure "X Relative To" is set to "text frame". And I'm gonna change the X offset to zero. That means the left edge of this group should be aligned to the left edge of the text frame. Next, and this is the core of the trick, I'm gonna change "Y Relative" also to "text frame". And I'm gonna change the Y offset to something small. Maybe three picas, that's half an inch. Now just to review what I'm doing here, I'm setting the upper left corner of the group. The anchored object to be aligned along the left edge of the text frame. And three picas or one half inch down from the bottom of the text frame. See how this icon right there is set to the bottom left corner? That means as that bottom left corner moves the anchored object will move too. This dialogue box can be confusing so take your time with it and look over the settings carefully. You'll need to set the X offset and the Y offset appropriately for you're design of course. Also, see this "prevent manual position" check box down here? Selecting that check box locks the objects in the group so that you can't place or change text or graphics in them. So in this case that's good, but on the other hand if I were making a template that would be a problem, because somebody else opening this document would not be able to change those images or the text. But on the other hand if I turn that off then they might accidentally move the group on the page. So they have to be careful. Now when I click okay, you'll see everything looks just right, but remember that anchored objects act kinda like characters in your text story. And I can see that really easily by selecting that text frame, going to the edit menu and then choosing edit in story editor. See that Icon up here in the upper left corner? That's the anchored object right there. And the reason that's important to know about is, when I edit the text inside this text frame, I have to be careful not to delete that character at the beginning. 'Cause if I do, then the whole group disappears. All of those graphics and the line and so on. That would be bad, but as long as you keep that in mind you can now edit this text. And as you add or remove text, the other frames will move too, let me show you. I'll close that, I'll click here at the end of the story and I'm just gonna type some gibberish to give you a sense of what's goin' on there. But as I type, you'll see that the text frame gets bigger and all those objects also moved down the page because they're anchored. Now I'll do the opposite, I'll pull out some of that text. And as soon as I hit the delete key you'll see that the text frame gets smaller, and all those objects move up. The more you use anchored objects and get comfortable with that anchored options dialogue box, the more cool things you'll find yourself doing with that feature, it's really powerful.
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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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