Speaking of tweaking default settings …
At least once a month, an InCopy user e-mails me and asks if Track Changes could be turned on by default for all stories. The answer is no, unfortunately.
While it seems at first that it is a customizable default — you can turn it on with no documents open — it only applies to documents you create from InCopy’s File > New command, not to layouts or assignments or the workflow stories they contain.
The only way for one of these stories to “remember” that Tracked Changes should be active is for an InCopy user to check it out, turn on Track Changes, and check it back in.
You can automate this somewhat, though:
- Before anyone checks out any stories, have an editor, a production manager, or a designer with InCopy open the layout (the .indd file) in InCopy and shift-click all the assignment names in the Assignments palette, including the “Unassigned InCopy Content” one if it has any stories. (If you’re not using Assignments, just select the Unassigned category).
- Choose Check Out from the palette menu (or press Command/Control-F9) to check out all the stories in the palette selection.
- Go to the Track Changes menu and choose Enable Tracking in All Stories.
- Finally, close the file, clicking the OK button at the prompt to check in all the stories.
So … doable, but not ideal. An “enable Track Changes” checkbox in InDesign, something the designer could turn on as they export stories, would be a great feature request for the next version (CS4) of InDesign; or even something in InCopy that would do the same thing. Take a second to fill out a Feature Request, the time is ripe! (And I know for a fact that the right people read these):
Adobe’s Feature Request Form
https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform
This article was last modified on December 18, 2021
This article was first published on April 30, 2007
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