Did you know that there are several different ways to remove overrides applied to styled text? Which one you should use depends on the kind of formatting you want to preserve.
The example below, we have a paragraph of text formatted with just a Body paragraph style (Adobe Caslon Pro, 14pt). There are no character-level or paragraph-level overrides or any character styles applied to the text.
Now, let’s make a bunch of modifications to the formatting:
- Character-level color overrides applied to words equal and Creator
- Character styles applied to words Life, Liberty and pursuit of Happiness
- Paragraph shading and a drop cap applied as paragraph-level overrides
- Paragraph-level override manually applied to the whole paragraph (Font: Raleway, Font Style: Semibold)
Now let’s see the different options for removing those overrides.
Example 1: Keep local character-level formatting
Goal: Remove paragraph-level formatting overrides, and character-level overrides applied to the whole paragraph. Keep local character-level overrides and any character styles
Action: Click on the paragraph name in Paragraph Styles panel
Result:
Example 2: Keep just the character styles
Goal: Remove all manual overrides but preserve any character styles
Action: Click on the Clear Overrides button at the bottom of the Paragraph Styles panel. Alternatively you can Alt/Opt-click on paragraph style name in Paragraph Styles panel
Result:
Example 3: Strip everything but the paragraph style
Goal: Remove paragraph-level and character-level formatting overrides, and also remove character styles (reset the paragraph to its base state)
Action: Alt/Opt+Shift-click on paragraph style name in Paragraph Styles panel
Result:
Example 4: Keep paragraph-level formatting and character styles
Goal: Remove character-level formatting overrides but preserve paragraph-level formatting overrides and character styles
Action: Ctrl/Cmd-click on Clear Overrides button at the bottom of Paragraph Styles panel
Result:
Example 5: Keep all character-level formatting
Goal: Remove all paragraph-level overrides but preserve character-level overrides (even ones applied to the whole paragraph) and character styles
Action: Ctrl/Cmd+Shift-click on Clear Overrides button at the bottom of Paragraph Styles panel
Result:
Overriding Options
InDesign offers a lot of methods for removing text formatting overrides. Knowing which one to use in any situation will save you time and effort, and ensure that you end up with the right formatting in the end.
This article was last modified on July 7, 2021
This article was first published on February 19, 2019
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