Chapter 3: Setting InDesign Preferences
105
l
Window ➪ Styles ➪ Object Styles (Ô+F7 or Ctrl+F7): Select defaults for the [Normal
Graphics Frame] and [Normal Text Frame] object styles, which are what all new frames
created in InDesign use.
l
Window ➪ Text Wrap (Ô+Option+W or Ctrl+Alt+W): The Text Wrap panel lets you
specify how text wraps around all new objects.
l
Object ➪ Corner Options (Ô+Option+R or Ctrl+Alt+R): The Corner Options dialog
box lets you choose a style for the corners of all new frames except those created with the
Type tool.
l
Object ➪ Clipping Path (Option+Shift+Ô+K or Ctrl+Alt+Shift+K): The Clipping Path
dialog box lets you specify the default attributes of clipping paths imported into graphics
frames.
l
Window ➪ Stroke (Ô+F10 or Ctrl+F10), Window ➪ Color ➪ Swatches (F5), Window ➪
Color ➪ Gradient (F6), and Window ➪ Output ➪ Attributes: These panels let you spec-
ify other default properties of objects. For example, if all objects you create are stroked
(framed), specify a weight in the Stroke panel.
l
Double-click the Polygon tool or Polygon Frame to open the Polygon Settings dialog
box (there is no menu command or keyboard shortcut): This lets you specify the
default number of sides and the inset for the first new polygon in a new document. Note
that you can set the two tools differently, letting you have two types of polygons remem-
bered for you.
Modifying Defaults for Views
Another way to customize your copy of InDesign is to specify which layout tools appear by default.
The lower two-thirds of the View menu let you do this. If you’d prefer not to view the edges of

View ➪ Grids & Guides ➪ Show/Hide Document Grid (Ô+' [apostrophe] or Ctrl+'
[apostrophe]): This shows or hides the document-wide grid established in the Grids
pane of the Preferences dialog box.
In addition to changing what layout tools appear by default, you can control some of their default
behavior. Choose the appropriate menu options to enable or disable them. Note that if the menu
option is currently enabled, a check mark appears next to its name, in which case choosing it again
disables the option and the check mark disappears. These options are:
l
View ➪ Grids & Guides ➪ Lock Guides (Option+Ô+; [semicolon] or Ctrl+Alt+;
[semicolon]): Disabled by default; when you choose this option to enable it, all ruler
guides are locked in place.
l
View ➪ Grids & Guides ➪ Lock Column Guides: Enabled by default; when you choose
this option to disable it, all column guides are no longer locked in place.
l
View ➪ Grids & Guides ➪ Snap to Guides (Shift+Ô+; [semicolon] or Ctrl+Shift+;
[semicolon]): Enabled by default; when you choose this option to disable it, aligning
objects with guides is more difficult, but positioning objects near guides is easier.
l
View ➪ Grids & Guides ➪ Snap to Document Grid: Disabled by default; when you
choose this option to enable it, objects are easy to align with document grid lines whether
or not they’re showing.
l
View ➪ Grids & Guides ➪ Smart Guides (Ô+U or Ctrl+U): Enabled by default, this
option provides visual feedback to help you size, align, and rotate objects via the mouse,
as Chapter 10 explains.
Cross-Reference
Chapter 7 covers how to use guides and grids in your layout. Chapter 10 covers the smart guides feature. n
Setting Color and Style Defaults
If you find yourself creating the same colors, paragraph styles, character styles, table styles, cell

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Part II
Document
Fundamentals
IN THIS PART
Chapter 4
Creating, Opening, and Saving
Documents
Chapter 5
Working with Pages
Chapter 6
Working with Layers
Chapter 7
Creating Layout Standards
Chapter 8
Defining Colors, Tints, and
Gradients
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111
CHAPTER
Creating, Opening,
and Saving Documents
IN THIS CHAPTER
Planning a publication
Creating a new document
Opening native and foreign
documents and templates

will it have facing pages like a book or a catalog, or will it be single-
sided like a flip chart?
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Part II: Document Fundamentals
112
l
How many columns will each page have? How wide will the margins be?
l
Does the budget allow for the use of color? If so, how many colors? What kind of paper
will it be printed on? What kind of printer or printing press will be used?
l
How will the publication be distributed? Under what circumstances will it be read? What’s
the life expectancy of the publication?
l
If the publication is bound for the Internet, will you create an HTML file (which can be
viewed by anybody with a Web browser), a Flash presentation (which may require further
work in Adobe Flash Professional and require users to have the free Adobe Flash Player
viewer application or browser plug-in), or a PDF file (which requires viewers to have the
free Adobe Reader application or browser plug-in)?
l
And what about the content of your publication? What programs were used to create the
text files and graphic files your publication will contain? Did you create the content your-
self, or did others? What file formats were used for text and graphic files? What is the
most effective way to present the content given the production requirements and budget?
As you answer these questions, a rough image of your publication begins to take shape in your
mind. When you’re ready to begin turning your ideas into an actual publication, you have a couple
of choices. Many designers whose skills date back to the days of paste-up still prefer to use tradi-
tional tools — a drawing pad and colored markers or pencils in this case — to create rough
sketches before they fire up their page-layout or illustration program. Other designers who were

1
⁄
2
× 11 inch)
(51p × 66p). The example at right shows the settings used to create an 800-×-600-pixel Web page.
Creating new documents
Here’s how to create a new document:
1.
Choose File ➪ New ➪ Document or press Ô+N or Ctrl+N.
2.
In the Intent pop-up menu, choose Print or Web, based on the type of document
you are creating. Use Web for documents designed to appear on a computer screen,
such as Flash animations and PDF documents you don’t expect readers to print. Note
that the options for the two types of intents aren’t different, though the defaults are; spe-
cifically, the Facing Pages option is deselected by default for Web pages and selected for
print pages, and Web pages use a default measurement of pixels whereas print pages use
a default measurement of picas.
3.
If you know exactly how many pages your publication will have, type the number in
the Number of Pages field. If you don’t know for sure, you can always add or delete
pages later as needed.
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Part II: Document Fundamentals
114
4.
If you want the document to start on a page number other than 1, enter it in the
Start Page # field. If you choose an even number and select the Facing Pages option in
Step 5, InDesign has the first page start on the left of a spread rather than on the right.
This new option also sets the page number in the Numbering & Section Options dialog

sized index card, type 5i in the Width field and 3i in the Height field. n
Tip
If you want to print n-up — meaning several “pages” on one sheet, such as several business cards on an
8
1
⁄
2
-×-11-inch sheet of paper — you can create a letter-sized document (8.5" × 11"), but you have to arrange
the business cards within the page boundary and add your own crop marks for each card. n
8.
To set the page orientation, click the Portrait or Landscape iconic button. Clicking
the Portrait iconic button produces a vertical page; clicking the Landscape iconic button
produces a horizontal page. You can also specify Height and Width values by clicking the
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Chapter 4: Creating, Opening, and Saving Documents
115
up and down arrows associated with these fields. Note that if you change the dialog box’s
default orientation setting (usually Portrait), the existing Width and Height values are
swapped.
9.
Type a value in the Columns field to specify how many columns your pages have.
You can also specify the number of columns by clicking the up or down arrow associated
with the Column field.
10.
Specify a gutter distance (the gutter is the space between columns) in the Gutter
field. You can also specify a gutter width value by clicking the up and down arrows
associated with the Gutter field.
11.
Specify margin values in the Margins area. The margin is the white area around the

⁄
16
inches, or
48p × 62p7.5). Note how the zoom level appears both in the Zoom field in the applica-
tion bar and after the name of the document in the document tab.
Tip
You can bypass the New Document dialog box by pressing Option+Ô+N or Ctrl+Alt+N. When you use this
method, the most recent settings in the New Document dialog box are used for the new document, except that
the new document will have just one page and start at page 1, no matter the number of pages or starting page
number set in the previous document. n
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Part II: Document Fundamentals
116
FIGURE 4.2
The results of setting up a facing-pages magazine-size document that starts on a left page
New Feature
InDesign CS5 adds several features to the New Document dialog box. The Intent pop-up menu is new, and the
default measurement for Web pages is now pixels instead of points (they achieve the same result). Also new is
the Start Page # field. Chapter 33 covers Web documents in more detail, and Chapter 5 covers using page
numbers in more detail. n
Creating your own document types
InDesign lets you create predefined document types, called document presets, to supplement the
standard ones such as Letter. Note that a preset is much more than a saved page size; it also
includes margins, columns, and the other settings specified in the New Document dialog box.
There are two ways to create document presets:
l
You can save these new-document settings by clicking Save Preset in the New Document
dialog box. These saved settings appear in the Document Preset pop-up menu in the
future.

The IDML format can also be created and opened by other programs, such as custom pub-
lishing databases, so unlike the INX format, it’s not just as a way to downsave files for use
by earlier versions of InDesign.)
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Part II: Document Fundamentals
118
l
Open a template under its own name. This makes editing templates easier than it is with
other programs, specifically QuarkXPress.
l
Open documents created with some versions of PageMaker and QuarkXPress: QuarkXPress
and QuarkXPress Passport versions 3.3 through 4.1 and PageMaker versions 6.0 through 7.0.
Tip
InDesign’s File menu displays the names of the ten most recently saved documents in the Open Recent sub-
menu that appears under the Open option in the File menu after you have opened a file. You can change
how many recently saved files are shown by using the Number of Recent Items to Display option in the File
Handling pane of the Preferences dialog box (choose InDesign ➪ Preferences ➪ File Handling or press Ô+K on
the Mac, or choose Edit ➪ Preferences ➪ File Handling or press Ctrl+K in Windows). n
To open a file:
1.
Choose File ➪ Open or press Ô+O or Ctrl+O. The Open a File dialog box shown in
Figure 4.4 appears.
2.
Locate and open the folder that contains the documents you want to open. Click a
file name or press and hold Ô or Ctrl and click multiple file names.
In Windows, the Files of Type pop-up menu offers several options: All Files, All Readable
Files, InDesign files, IDML, InDesign CS3 Interchange (INX), PageMaker 6.0–7.0 files,
QuarkXPress 3.3–4.1x files, Adobe PDF Creation Settings Files, InDesign Book, and All
Formats. Choose any of these options to display a specific file format in the file list.

FIGURE 4.4
The Open a File dialog box, with the Mac version at top and the Windows version at
bottom. When you open a file, you have the option to open it normally (Open Normal
on the Mac, or Normal in Windows), open the original copy of a template (Open
Original or Original), or open a copy of the file (Open Copy or Copy).
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Part II: Document Fundamentals
120
4.
Click OK to close the dialog box. Each document you open appears in a separate docu-
ment window. The page and view magnification shown when a document was last saved
is used when you open the document.
Tip
You can also open an InDesign document or template by double-clicking its file icon. If InDesign is not run-
ning, double-clicking a document or template file — as long as it has the proper file name extension (
.indd

for documents and
.indt
for templates) — launches the application and opens the document/template. If
InDesign is already running, the document appears in a new window. n
Opening documents versus opening templates
Whenever you save a document, you have the option of saving a standard document file or a tem-
plate (more on saving templates later in this chapter). A template is an InDesign file used to create
multiple iterations of the same publication. For example, if you produce a monthly newsletter, you
can save gobs of time and ensure consistency from issue to issue by using a template as the starting
point for each edition of the newsletter. A template is essentially the shell of a publication that
Both Windows and Mac OS X use icons to show you (and tell programs) the format of a file. They also
use file name extensions to identify the file type, but by default these file name extensions are hidden

the dialog box. (You have to be using the Finder, not be in an application, to get this menu.)
Displaying File Name Extensions
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Chapter 4: Creating, Opening, and Saving Documents
121
contains the basic framework — page layout, master pages, styles, and so on — but doesn’t con-
tain any actual content.
Cross-Reference
For more information about creating templates, see Chapter 7. n
When you open a template, you have two choices: You can open a copy of the file and use it to
create a new publication or you can open the original file, make changes, and then save an updated
version of the template.
If you want to use a template as the starting point for a new publication, choose File ➪ Open or
press Ô+O or Ctrl+O, locate and select the template, and make sure Open Normal (Mac) or
Normal (Windows) is selected in the Open a File dialog box (refer to Figure 4.4) before you
click Open.
If you want to modify a template, click Open Original (Mac) or Open (Windows) at the bottom of
the dialog box. If Open Normal (Mac) or Normal (Windows) is selected, clicking Open opens a
new document window and assigns the document a default name: Untitled-1, Untitled-2, and so
on. If Open Original (Mac) or Original (Windows) is selected, the original file opens and the origi-
nal name appears in the title bar.
Working with files in the Bridge file system
There’s another way to open documents and templates in InDesign: Choose File ➪ Browse in
Bridge or press Option+Ô+O or Ctrl+Alt+O to open documents or templates, or choose
File ➪ New ➪ Document from Template to open just templates. Choosing either option opens the
Adobe Bridge program, shown in Figure 4.5, where you can browse for a file to open.
FIGURE 4.5
You can access files through the Adobe Bridge program, a common file environment for Creative Suite
applications.

find files of interest.
Note
Most of Bridge’s features are oriented to Photoshop users, so chances are you can just ignore Bridge. n
New Feature
The new Mini Bridge panel (choose Window ➪ Mini Bridge) is a faster way to find files using Bridge’s file envi-
ronment. Click the Search iconic button to search for specific files, or click the Browse Files iconic button to
navigate for files using a pared-down version of the Adobe Bridge file-navigation controls. n
Converting documents created with other programs
One of InDesign’s hallmarks is its capability to open documents from some versions of
QuarkXPress and PageMaker and convert them to InDesign documents. (If any of these files’ for-
mats aren’t supported in InDesign, you get the Warnings dialog box shown in Figure 4.6.) It can-
not open documents created by Microsoft Publisher, but Markzware does offer a utility to convert
Publisher files to InDesign format.
Also, InDesign cannot import PDF files, but it can bring in PDF files as graphics for placement in
your document. Chapter 14 covers this process in detail. It can also import PDF job-option files,
so you can reuse the same settings already developed for Adobe Acrobat Distiller when you export
to the print PDF format, as Chapter 32 covers.
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Chapter 4: Creating, Opening, and Saving Documents
123
Cross-Reference
For links to Markzware and other providers of InDesign tools, visit this book’s companion Web site at
www.InDesignCentral.com
. n
Caution
Because other programs’ formats are so different from InDesign’s, and their capabilities differ as well, the
chances of being able to import a foreign document and have it flawlessly convert to InDesign are small. Use
this feature as the first step in the conversion process, but expect to spend time cleaning up the converted files
by hand. n

circular blends.
l
Text on a curved path is converted to regular text in a rectangular frame, even though
InDesign supports text on paths.
l
H&J sets don’t have an equivalent in InDesign, so they do not convert, although any H&J
settings are carried over into the converted paragraph styles.
l
Libraries don’t convert.
l
Printer styles don’t convert.
PageMaker
InDesign can read PageMaker 6.0, 6.5, and 7.0 files. Because PageMaker and InDesign offer many
of the same features, there are fewer translation issues between them. Some to take note of include:
l
Fill patterns aren’t supported.
l
Libraries won’t convert.
l
Printer styles won’t convert.
Recovering a document after a crash or power failure
InDesign includes an automatic recovery feature that protects your documents in the event of a
power failure or a system crash. As you work on a document, any changes you make after saving
it are stored in a separate, temporary file. Under normal circumstances, each time you choose
File ➪ Save or press Ô+S or Ctrl+S, the information in the temporary file is applied to the docu-
ment. The data in the temporary file is important only if you aren’t able to save a document before
crashing. A word of warning: Although InDesign’s automatic recovery feature is a nice safety net,
you should still be careful to save your work often. Here’s how it works:
1.
Relaunch InDesign or, if necessary, restart your computer and then launch