InDesign 101: Saving Your Work

You might think you know everything about saving a document. You’ve done it thousands of times. Choose File > Save, name the file, click Save, and from then on just press Cmd/Ctrl+S each time you want to save. But there are actually some special techniques that you may not know that can help you work more efficiently.

Save or Save As?

When you save your work, you are designating three aspects of your file: Who, What, and Where. Remember those requirements as you work. The first thing that could save you a few microseconds of work is what you do the first time you save a document. I’ve seen many students move to the File menu and choose Save As for untitled documents. That’s what they’ve been told to do: Save As is the command that you use to name a document. Well, technically, that’s true. But if you’re looking at an Untitled document (Figure 1), it doesn’t matter which one you choose—Save or Save As. At this early, untitled stage of a document’s life, both bring up the Save As dialog box. So, if you’re like me, and routinely press Command+S to save a document, just continue to do it when you start a project. You’ll still get the Save As dialog box (Figure 2). This is where you can enter a name—the Who—for the file as well as choose the location.

Right

up there with a file’s name—both in the Save As dialog box and in overall “file importance”—is the location for the file—that’s the Where. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen students name the file and then hit the Save button almost reflexively. Later on, when they need to reopen the file, they have no idea where they saved it. Don’t forget to look at where the file has been saved, or navigate to put it where it belongs.

How Often Should You Save?

Once you’ve named the file and put it in its proper place, Command/Ctrl+S is all you need to do to keep your work safe and secure. The question is, how often should you save? I follow these rules:

• Save if you have ten or more minutes of unsaved work.
• Save when you finish doing something really difficult.
• Save when you’re moving to another page.
• Save when you’re moving to another document window.
• Save before running a script or plug-in action.
• Save before you switch over to another program.
• Save when you’re answering the phone.
• Save when you’re getting up from the computer.
• Save when the cat jumps up on the desk.

Save As or Save a Copy?

You may have noticed there is yet another “Save” command under the File menu. This is the command to Save a Copy of the document. So what’s the difference, and which one should you choose? When you choose Save As, you always see the dialog box where you can rename the file. This is helpful if you’ve opened the October version of your newsletter and now want to change it to the November issue. You save the file under a new name, strip all the October information out, and right away you’re working on the new November document. (There’s actually a better way to do this, but we’ll cover that later.) Save a Copy is different, and extremely handy if you’re about to start something tricky in the document. The Save a Copy feature starts out with the same options as Save As (Figure 3). However, when it closes, you’re left working on the original file.

Think of Save a Copy as a way to create versions of your document as you work. Let’s say you started working at 9 am and continued for an hour. You then decide to change all the swatches in the project to neon colors. Since you don’t want to lose your original swatches, you choose Save a Copy and name that file SavedJustInCase or something similar. Then you keep working on the open document. Later on, you realize that you hate the neon colors. You don’t have to choose Undo a hundred times to get back to the original colors. Just close the file you’re working on and open the SavedJustInCase file. Rename that file as your original and continue to work. Simple. Save a Copy is also helpful if you need to back up your work to a server at the end of a day. Again, it’s like saying “save a copy of what I’m working on right now, and put that copy over there for safekeeping—but let me keep working on the file.”

Documents or Templates?

The last aspect of saving the file—the What—is choosing the file format (Figure 4). There are three choices: InDesign [version] document, InDesign [version] template, or InDesign CS4 or later (IDML). The extensions for these three formats are .indd for a document, .indt for a template, and .idml for an IDML file.

Most people save all their files as InDesign documents (.indd) and never investigate what a template means. When you save an InDesign document, you can close it and then reopen it to continue your work. However, an InDesign template is different. When you save the file as a template, you’re adding protection against inadvertently writing over your work. Let’s say you’re working on the monthly newsletter I mentioned earlier. What would happen if you opened the October version, but forgot to use the Save As command to save it under a new name? If you’d stripped out all the October information and then started on the November issue, you would lose the October version. This could be a real problem. If you save the first issue as a template (.indt), you can’t inadvertently override the previous issue. When you go to reopen that original, it opens as an untitled document. The template format protects the file. You can also save a template of the original file with all the master pages, swatches, styles, and placed images that appear in each issue. The name of the template could be “Basic Layout.indt” or something similar. When you open the file, you get a fresh “Untitled” document which you can then save as a regular InDesign document and continue to work on it.

Saving Backward

One of the most frequent questions I hear is how to save an InDesign document so it can be opened with an earlier version of the program (sometimes called “downsaving” a document). This is an issue because if you’re working with a file in InDesign CC, someone with a previous version of InDesign can’t open that file. InDesign CS6 can’t open InDesign CC files; CS5 can’t open CS6; CS4 can’t open CS5. It’s not a conspiracy from Adobe to get you to upgrade to the latest version—it’s a result of the way new features in each version are saved in the file. That’s where the IDML file type comes in. Instead of sending your version of the InDesign file to someone who can’t open it, send them an IDML file. It’s a kind of a go-between file. They can open the document and work on it. They can save the file using their version of InDesign. When they send it back to you, your more recent version can always open previous file types. When you save your document as an IDML file, anyone with CS4 or later can open the file. However, it is not a best practice to use IDML files to send files back and forth repeatedly between versions. When you save the file backwards, some features may be lost. For instance, one of the features in InDesign CS6 gave users the ability to create PDF forms. But when those CS6 files are saved as IDML files and then opened in CS5, any form objects are converted to ordinary frames. (It has to work that way, because CS5 doesn’t offer that feature.) That’s just one example. There are many more for each upgrade of the program. If you need to do a lot of work with someone who has a previous version, you have to make a choice: Don’t use any of the new features in the version you’re using, have the other person upgrade to the latest version, or install the previous version yourself. This is also true if you work with a print shop that won’t upgrade to the latest version of InDesign and wants you to save in IDML format. Don’t do it! You run the risk of something changing and screwing up your layout. Instead, send them a PDF or insist that if they want your business they should have the latest version of the program.

Open Normal, Original, or Copy

Earlier on I said that when you open a template file, it opens as Untitled—but that’s not entirely, always true. It depends on how you open it. Let’s take a quick look at how InDesign lets you open files. When you choose File > Open, you have three controls that affect how the file opens (Figure 5).

Normal opens the file with the normal action for that type of file. If the original file was an INDD document, the file opens with the same name. If the file was an INDT template, the file opens as Untitled, because that’s the normal behavior for a template. This is what you get if you double-click the file icon on your Mac or Windows computer; it just opens it. Original opens the original version of the file. For INDD documents, this is the same as Normal. For templates, however, this opens the original template file under its template name, not as an untitled copy. This is terrific for making changes to the template. Copy opens a copy of the original file. For INDD documents, this means the file opens untitled, just as if it were a template. For INDT documents, this means the file opens as it usually does, as an untitled copy. See Table 1 to see the differences between these actions.

Saving a Preview

I want to say one more thing about saving documents. You have an option in the Save As dialog box to Always Save Preview Images with Documents (Figure 6). This feature adds an image that can be previewed before the file is opened. However, this preview doesn’t show up in the Mac OS Finder or Windows Explorer. It does show up in Adobe Bridge.

Better Save than Sorry

Whatever methods you use to save files, make sure you save early and save often. Also make sure you have a backup server—optimally offsite—where you back up all your files on a regular basis. Understanding the different methods for saving and opening files just might save your business one day.