In the last issue of InCopyFlow I wrote about a couple ways that designers could create back-ups and/or versions of an InDesign layout and its stories while it was in the middle of an InDesign/InCopy production cycle. Here’s the story, if you want to refresh your memory: Versioning Stories and Layouts.
You may remember that the methods I explained, while do-able, entailed somewhat convoluted manual workarounds because the stock InDesign/InCopy workflow doesn’t come with any back-up or versioning features. (And so far, I’m sorry to say, Adobe’s free Version Cue CS3 appears broken for InCopy/InDesign workflows, per user reports on the Adobe forums.) To gain these features you need to move to an expensive publication management system like K4 or Smart Connection Enterprise, which are beyond the reach — and often, overkill — for many publications.
We’re left with the simple fact that when you’re working “commando-style” in InDesign and InCopy, everyone is locked into working on a single version — technically, the final version — of each story’s contents. There is no Save Story As command when you’re editing content in a layout or assignment.
It’s not a deal-killer, obviously; since thousands of companies are getting along just fine without it. And in many respects, it’s-a-feature-not-a-bug to always be working on the final version of a story. Still, it would be nice to have options.
The designers had their turn, now the editors are at bat.
Track Changes … Up to a Point
Editors can get some control over content changes in text stories by turning on Track Changes (Changes > Track Changes in Current Story) and keeping it on. That allows a user to change their mind on each edit made to the story by anyone who worked on it, even after saving the file. Choosing Reject Change reverts an edit back to its original state before Track Changes was enabled. Printing out (or PDFing) a Galley or Story view of the file offers the option to include Track Changes markup, useful for documenting edit history.
But, Track Changes has limitations. For one thing, if more than one user edits the same instance of text without accepting or rejecting their predecessor’s change, InCopy gets confused as to what is the original text.
Also, to do any sort of roll-back operation like “Reject all changes made since last Friday,” or “Accept all Mary’s changes but reject John’s” — options that Track Changes doesn’t offer — will require tedious manual work, vetting every change with the Change Info panel before making an accept/reject decision for each one.
Roll Your Own Versions
For these reasons and others, InCopy users have found it helpful on occasion to make their own back-up versions of critical stories, even though it does take a little extra work. (Note there’s no way for an InCopy user to save a version of a layout itself or even an assignment; only the individual stories contained within.)
Following are three ways for editor to make a version of a story.
Method 1: Copy/Paste into a New Document
I think the simplest way is to select all of a story’s text (Edit > Select All), copy the selection (Edit > Copy), create a new InCopy document (File > New, default settings are fine), and in the new empty InCopy file, paste in the text (File > Paste). That’s Command or Control-A-C-N-[Enter]-V, one after the other, if you’re a keyboard shortcut type. (The mnemonic “All Children Need [Extra] Versions” works well.)
Other than track changes markup — which is lost; the changes get accepted during the trip — all the content comes through in the new file, including formatting, styles, inline notes, tables, even text with XML tags. (A way to create a version that includes tracked changes markup is covered further down.)
Note that you can Select All and Copy text from any story in a layout or assignment, even if someone else is currently working on it; even if the story was never made editable by the designer. The only limitation is that you can only do one story at a time. But if a story spans multiple threaded frames, don’t worry, the Select All step gets all the text in all its frames.
Save this new InCopy document with a useful filename (“FeatureStory_v1.incx”) in a folder on the server that you maintain just for that purpose.
Now, let’s say that back in the “live” document, you continue to work on that feature story. You make some changes and check it in. Then — horrors! — you realize you accidentally deleted an important section that had taken you hours to write. Since you checked it in, it’s too late to Undo or Revert.
FeatureStory_v1.incx to the rescue! Just open that .incx file directly in InCopy (File > Open), select the section’s text and copy it to the clipboard. In the live document, check out the story, turn off Tracked Changes if it’s on (to avoid a huge swathe of “Added Text” markup from what you’re about to do) and paste the text where it should go. Turn Track Changes back on, save changes and check the story in again. Saved!
If you ever need to roll back — completely replace a story with a saved version — you might find it easier to simply Place (i.e., import) the .incx file into the document instead of copying and pasting from it. Remember that the external .incx file has no tracked changes markup, so consider printing out a Galley/Story view (with change markup) of the current story before proceeding. Also think about making a external version of the story in its current state before rolling back.
To do the rollback you’ll need to check the current story out first. Then turn off Track Changes, select all the text in the story, choose File > Place and in the Place dialog box, select the .incx file of the version you saved. When you click the Open button, InCopy replaces the selected text with the previous version of the story. Note that if you don’t select all the text first, the older version is added to the current story (starting at your cursor position) instead of replacing it. If that happens, just Undo.
Method 2: Export to RTF or Tagged Text
If you’re not using (or don’t mind losing) inline notes or XML tags as well as tracked changes, you could export a story to Rich Text Format or Adobe InDesign Tagged Text instead, which saves a few steps compared to the “create a new InCopy file” method above.
With your cursor blinking in the story, go to File > Export and choose either of these formats in the Export dialog box’s Format menu. Name the file and select the folder where you want InCopy to export it to, preferably a folder dedicated to that publication’s versioned stories on the server. When you click the OK button, InCopy exports a copy of the current story as an RTF or Tagged Text file and you’re returned to the live document, good to go.
Either format retains all the tables and text formatting, including styles. The difference between the two is that RTF files are generic, and can be opened by virtually any program (including Microsoft Word) that works with text files; while Tagged Text (which refers to formatting tags, not XML tags) is for InDesign and InCopy only because it’s a plain text file with proprietary text codes that only those programs understand and can convert back to formatting instructions. Either format is fine for our purposes; they both retain the same info.
Like standalone .incx files, InCopy can open RTF and Tagged Text files directly (converting them to .incx in the process) allowing you to cherry-pick text to copy and paste into your live document. You can also Place them as described above, for wholesale rollbacks to previous versions. In either case, though, you should turn on the Show Options dialog box when opening/placing these, and in the Options dialog box, specify that formatting should be retained, before clicking OK.
Method 3: Dupe the Linked .incx File(s)
It’s a little tricky, but there is a way to create a version of a story that retains everything, including tracked changes. And even if you don’t care about tracked changes, you may end up using this method because it can be applied to many stories at once, instead of one at a time.
You know that every story listed in your Assignments panel exists as a distinct .incx file on your server, yes? Just use Windows Explorer or the Finder to navigate to the file server, find the project folder containing the publication and all its .incx files (probably in a subfolder), and physically duplicate the live, linked .incx document — the one you want to make a version of.
Rename the duplicate file to something you’ll remember with a version number (Feature_v2.incx) and move it to a special folder you created to hold these. You could even shift-click multiple .incx files from the server’s project folder and copy/paste them in one fell swoop to your versions folder, then rename them there.
The tricky part is finding these .incx rascals. InDesign buries them a few subfolder levels deep on purpose so users don’t have to see how the sausage is made.
So here’s a tip: The fastest way to locate a story’s .incx file is in InCopy itself, with its Links panel (Window > Links). Go to Layout view and click inside a story. Now look at the Links panel, and you’ll see the name of the .incx file belonging to that story is selected in the panel. Keep it selected while you open the Links panel fly-out menu and choose Reveal in Explorer (or Reveal in Finder, on a Mac).
The Finder/Explorer obligingly comes to the front, drills down to the correct subfolder on the server, and selects the .incx file that was highlighted in the Links panel. That’s the one you want to duplicate, move and rename to make a version out of. And maybe its brothers and sisters too, which likely live in the same location.
Be sure to rename the files after you duplicate them, otherwise things will get messed up (recoverable, but a pain). It’s okay to rename the duplicate ones because they aren’t linked to the layout any more; they’re free agents.
When you open one of these free agents directly in InCopy (File > Open), you’ll see all the tracked changes are still intact, along with everything else — formatting, etc. However, if you copy and paste from it, or import (Place) the file into a layout story to roll back, you lose the tracked changes markup, just as with the other methods. The only way to keep them during a rollback is to check in the story, and then ask the designer to Relink the story in InDesign’s Links panel; so the frame in the layout links to the older version (the duped .incx file) instead of the current one.
This article was last modified on December 18, 2021
This article was first published on November 1, 2007
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