InDesign Tips, Tricks, and Techniques
Howdy, I'm David Blatner. I'm the co-host of InDesignSecrets.com and the co-author of such books as Real World InDesign. I'll be presenting a session on InDesign tips and tricks (covering both CS2 and CS3) that you must know about if you're going to be efficient with this rich and amazing program -- including variables, advanced find/change techniques, supercool transparency effects, and using InDesign documents as smart objects.
Here's a small tip that might help you as you're working in InDesign: You probably know that you can save a document preset in the New Document dialog box, right? For example, if you create 7 x 9 documents a lot, it's a good idea to set up the size and margins and so on just once in the New Document dialog box and then press Save Preset so that your setup will then be available from now on in the dialog box's Document Preset pop-up menu.
But here's a shortcut most people don't realize: After you make a preset, you can hold down the Shift key while choosing it from the File > Document Preset submenu, and InDesign simply opens that sized document without bothering you with a dialog box!
Plus, you know that Command-N opens the New Document dialog box, but did you know that Command-Option-N/Ctrl-Alt-N creates a new document based on the last Document Preset you opened? That's the kind of little thing that really speeds you up as you're working.
I hope you'll join us at Refine Design in Septebmer for dozens more tips, tricks, and techniques ranging from the helpful to the mind-blowing!
