Excerpted from the InDesign Secrets video training course on lynda.com.
If you’re some kind of crazy InDesign ninja, you’ve memorized every keyboard shortcut there is because you know that taking your hands off the keyboard to go to menus and panels just slows you down. But if your brain is too full to memorize everything, you can still be an InDesign speed demon as long as you remember one thing: Quick Apply.
You summon the Quick Apply panel by typing Command-Return (Mac) or Control-Enter (Windows). Then, just type a few letters of the thing you want in the Quick Apply panel’s field and hit Return/Enter.
For example, say you want to apply the paragraph style you’ve named “October Surprise Section” to one or more paragraphs. Select the text, bring up Quick Apply, and type “oct” in the field at the top of the panel. Quick Apply will almost instantaneously show you a prioritized list of styles, menu commands, scripts, and variables that contain the letters “oct” in their name. Select the one you want, hit Return/Enter again, and InDesign immediately applies the “October Surprise Section” paragraph style to your text!
Even InDesigners who know all the keyboard shortcuts can benefit from Quick Apply; for example, there is no shortcut for dynamic spellcheck, but with Quick Apply, you can quickly turn dynamic spelling on and off without leaving the keyboard.
In the video tutorial below, I’ll show you even more ways to get the most out of InDesign’s Quick Apply feature.
Visit InDesign Secrets on lynda.com to watch more videos of effects projects you can complete in ten minutes or less.
This article was last modified on August 2, 2021
This article was first published on October 3, 2011
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