297 Share CC libraries with other users

- [Anne-Marie] If you're using InDesign CC then you have this interesting little panel called CC Libraries. And in this video I want to talk about some tips and how-tos in sharing Libraries with other CC users. In my CC Libraries panel I have been creating special Libraries for my own use and to share with others for over a year, which is why I have a lot. But if you don't have any, if you've never cracked open this panel, go ahead and choose Create New Library and drag some items into the Library panel from your document.

Like in this one called GB whitepapers I've already dragged in some things, but I might, for example, what to include the background color for my sidebars. So I'll double-click this frame, and then click the little swatch icon down here, and then that grayscale color, I guess it's 25%, gets added to Colors. You can have Libraries that are per project or per client or your favorite stock photos or any combination of such.

And what is very cool about Libraries, as I said, is that you can share them with other InDesign CC users. That is unlike the regular object Library that you can create from the File menu in InDesign that is, because everything that you put into a CC Library is automatically synced with your CC space on Adobe servers. And so when you share a Library you are allowing that person to see and copy those items in that Library from your space on the server.

It's kind of like Dropbox if you're familiar with Dropbox. Now sharing is not the same as collaborating and I have a couple other tip videos in the series that talk about collaborating. I'm just talking about sharing. Now before I talk about sharing Libraries I think that it would help to understand sharing files in Creative Cloud versus sharing Libraries. As I said, everybody has space on Adobe servers, so if you are logged in, as I'm logged in now, and you go to the Creative Cloud app, go to Assets, click Files, you can see that you can choose to view your files on your Folder, which means on your computer, or on the Web.

If I go to Open Folder it jumps to my Creative Cloud Files folder, which is synced with my Creative Cloud cloud space. So all these files are synced up there. And if I want to I can right-click on any one of these files and choose Share Link. See it's kind of really like Dropbox. I could also jump to see it in my webspace or I can View File Activity. Let me go back to the Creative Cloud app and say let's look at it on the Web.

So if I go to the Web it logs me into my webspace and you see that I have Files, these match what's on my hard drive, there's a category for Mobile Creations, which I don't have much at all, and then there's a third category for Libraries. And this is what I want to talk about, sharing Libraries. So it's different than files. You can share files with other people and they can just view the files or download them, like maybe your clients and so on, but Libraries, when you share Libraries they're mainly meant to share with other CC users.

For example, freelancers that you want them to have a bunch of assets to work on a project with, or your coworkers if you're all working on a new branding project, or you're the creative director and you want all of the art directors to have the current version of all the logos and such, then you might want to share Libraries. So this is showing me all the Libraries that I have. This matches what you see here in this drop down menu. Now remember, it's not just InDesign. CC Libraries is in Photoshop and Illustrator and a couple other apps and they too will see the same named Libraries.

But today we're just talking about using them in InDesign. Some of these Library icons have little people on them, that means that I am collaborating with other users. Not the same as sharing, it's very confusing. But we are not talking about collaborating, we're just talking about sharing. So let's say that I want to share my GB whitepaper Library with a freelancer. With nothing selected here I can go up to the menu and choose Share Link. Now I said don't select anything, because if I selected something, like say Cover, and then right-clicked, and chose Share Link it would only share that one Library item.

I want to share the entire Library. So I'll go to CC Libraries, Share Link, and it brings me to my Creative Cloud space, and it says here is the Public Link, and if you like Adobe will send an email to the freelancer, or I can just copy and paste this link and email it to them myself. Now I've already done this, which is why this says Remove Public Link. I've already shared it, so right not it's a Public Link, it's not private anymore. If I want to prevent people from being able to view the items in this Library, including that freelancer, I can just click Remove Public Link.

I'm going to leave it as-is. And I took a screenshot already of what that email invitation looks like and there is the URL. Now I'm going to log out and then log back in as my freelancer, so you can see what it looks like from her end. Okay, I have logged out as my old account and logged back in under a secondary CC account that I have named Anne, and I've opened up that link from the email. Here is the GB whitepapers shared Library.

And it's the exact same items that were in the Library that the original person had, Adobe Anne-Marie, and from here if I want to I can right-click and I can do a Save As, or I can double-click on them and look at their specs. I'm going to go back. But probably what I want to do is I'm going to go back to the shared Library and choose Save to Creative Cloud. This is in effect taking a copy of the Library that the original person shared with me and saving it to my own Library.

So after I've done that I'm going to jump over to InDesign and in CC Libraries look for GB whitepapers and there it is. And now I can use it in my own documents. So, for example, here's a sidebar, I'll drag it out. This was an InDesign item, which gets saved as a snippet. And if I want to fill a box with a color I can choose it right from here, from the Colors. Now it's important to remember though that the original person just shared this with me, they didn't collaborate.

And that means that if they update their copy of this Library, if they put more items into this Library, I will not get notified that there are new items, and it won't automatically update. It's just a one-off copy. Now I'm actually going to go ahead and do that, I have another computer here that you guys can't see that's logged onto my original account and I've added a green swatch to the Library. Nothing is happening here in CC Libraries. You don't see anything new. If I jump back to the shared Library and I reload the page I can see it's there.

So the live link is still happening, the live share link is still happening, but I'm never notified in InDesign that there is an update. Now that is different than if the original owner had chosen to collaborate as apposed to share the link. If it was collaborated then I would automatically get this updated right here. Sometimes you don't want people to collaborate, you just want to share what you have. So what would happen here is that I would need to be notified somehow by the original person that I've added more items to this Library.

And so as Anne I'd have to come back to the share link and choose Save to Creative Cloud again. Now this version 1.5 of this feature and I really hope that they fix this in the future, but now I have two copies of GB whitepapers, it didn't prompt me to replace the existing one, and here's the updated one. So I could come back to this one and choose to delete it in my server space or something, but it is kind of a mess. Anyway, but that is how shared Libraries work in InDesign.

If you want to share all the assets, the Colors, the Styles, the Graphics with another person who's using CC, but you don't want them to have the ability to edit that Library, then all you need to do is share the Library with them by choosing Share Link.