Making Use of the Info in Galley and Story Views
Sometimes the things that are most obvious, go completely unnoticed because we’re focusing too hard on the task at hand. This became apparent to me when I found myself constantly looking at the Assignment panel for the stories that I needed to check out. It seemed inefficient to be bouncing over there all the time when most of what I was looking for was right there in Galley and Story view.
Identifying a story
For example, I had named all of the stories that I was working with using an easily identifiable name. I kept going over to the Assignments panel and double clicking on the name of the story to locate it in Galley view. That’s when it hit me, that information is displayed in a gray bar at the top of every story in both Galley and Story view. Right there in front of me!
That gray bar not only tells you the name of the story, but did you notice that it also let’s you know if the story is available to check out or not. That is convenient information to see at a quick glance. You want to check out the story to work on it? Simply right-click anywhere in the story and choose Check Out.
Once you check out a story, it also let’s you know that you are editing the story and if someone else has the story checked out, it let’s you know who has it checked out as well.
Checking in content is equally as easy, simply right-click anywhere within a story and choose Check In. Galley and Story view also show you if a story is out of date, and provides an easy way to update that content if needed. Just right-click and choose Update Content.
Taking Control of the View
Those gray bars can be a bit overwhelming. By default when you open an InDesign document or Assignment, every story is expanded forcing you to scroll down the page to see the various stories that are available. If you option+click (Mac OS) or alt+click (Windows) on a triangle located on the left side of the gray bar in an expanded story, it will collapse all stories except the one in which you click. Expand another story by clicking on the triangle, then option click on the triangle again to collapse all but the current story.
Realizing that there were some great features right in front of me has caused me to work a little bit differently in InCopy and a little more efficiently. I hope these techniques help you to work a little faster and more efficiently as well.