From the course: InDesign Secrets
372 Add or remove columns while editing a story - InDesign Tutorial
From the course: InDesign Secrets
372 Add or remove columns while editing a story
- [Instructor] I have a text frame here, and you can see the little red icon in the lower right corner, which of course means this is overset. There's too much text to fit this frame. Now one way to make this frame larger is to use Auto-Size. And you can find the Auto-Size feature by choosing the Object menu, and then choosing Text Frame Options. Or you can simply option or alt double click on the text frame with the Selection tool. Up comes the Text Frame Options dialog box, and now I can click on Auto-Size up here at the top. Now this feature lets you make a text frame grow as you add text to a story. So it won't easily become overset. And normally people set up frames so that they grow vertically, that is they choose height only. But the Auto-Size feature can also make a frame expand in width. I'll change this to width only, and I'm also going to change this anchor point to the left side of the frame. That means lock the left side of the frame and then let it grow or shrink on the right. Now this width only feature in the Auto-Size tab is usually used for long headlines, but there's another use for this which is pretty cool. You can use it to automatically add or remove columns as you edit a story. Now the key to making this work, is to also change the column setting over here in the General tab. I'm going to change the column setting from fixed number to fixed width. When you have both Auto-Size set to width, and columns set to fixed width, then InDesign will adjust the number of columns for you as you add or remove text. Let me show you. I'll click okay, and you'll see that this automatically turned into a three column frame. The height of the frame didn't change, and the column width did not change, but InDesign did expand the frame and add another column automatically so that the column widths are all the same. And even better, I'm going to go ahead and double click inside this frame to place my text cursor inside of it. And now I'm going to delete some of this text. You can see that the frame shrinks back down to only two columns. If I add text back in, I'm just typing some random text in here, you'll see that it grows another column. Now unfortunately there is no max width feature in Auto-Size. So, as you add more text, the frame will actually go right off the side of the page. So you do need to be a little bit careful here. I really wish that Adobe would add a max height and a max width feature to Auto-Size. Nevertheless, this auto add and remove columns feature can be very useful in certain kinds of templated documents.
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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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