For my final On the Move column, I’ve assembled a whole mess of quick tips that you should remember. I’ve also thrown in a few of the things that you shouldn’t waste your time trying to find in InDesign (use QuarkXPress instead).
Shortcuts and commands to remember:
- To release an item from a master page control, Cmd/Ctrl-Shift-click the item.
- In addition to the Select All command, InDesign also offers the Deselect All Command: Cmd/Ctrl-Shift-A.
- To insert a page number, press Cmd-Opt-N or Ctrl-Alt-N.
- Unlike the placeholder symbol in XPress, InDesign inserts the prefix letter of the master page.
- In the Find/Change dialog box, click the More Options button to search and replace style sheets, colors, and other advanced formatting options.
- To override local formatting, Opt/Alt-click the name of the paragraph style.
- To convert character styles into local formatting, Opt/Alt-Shift-click the name of the paragraph style.
- InDesign’s equivalent to Font Usage is the Type > Find Font command.
- InDesign’s equivalent to Picture Usage is the Window > Links palette.
- Create rounded-corner rectangles by drawing a regular rectangle, then choosing Object > Corner Effects, and then choosing the Rounded option and setting the size of the rounded corner.
- The equivalent to the Show Invisibles command is Type > Show Hidden Characters.
- Instead of a Thumbnail drag, you can drag pages from the Pages palette from one document to another.
- InDesign’s Type > Create Outlines is the equivalent of the XPress command Text to Box.
- Use InDesign’s Gradient Swatches to create the equivalent of the XPress color blends.
Here are some of the nifty XPress features we miss in InDesign and hope to see in future versions of the product:
- There is no equivalent for the XPress Merge > Intersection, Merge > Union, and Merge > Difference commands for combining objects. InDesign does have a Object > Compound Path command that does some of the other XPress Merge commands.
- There is no equivalent for XPress Multi-Inks. To create the effect of multi-inks you need to create two objects, one on top of the other, and then set the top object to overprint. You can preview the appearance of the overprint by choosing View > Overprint Preview.
- There is no equivalent for XPress custom stripes. To create the similar effect you need to stack multiple objects on top of each other.
- You can’t base the character attributes for a paragraph style on a character style sheet.
- There is no live preview of how text reflows as you move or modify objects.
- In QuarkXPress 5 you can change the content of a table cell from text to picture by using the menu command. All InDesign table cells are text cells. You must paste an image as an inline graphic to create picture cells.
- There is no Orthogonal Line Tool. Hold the Shift key as you draw with the Line tool. However, the resulting line is not constrained to 90-degree angles.
- There are no custom styles for paragraph rules.
Read more On the Move to InDesign tips here.
Read more by Sandee Cohen.
This article was last modified on March 10, 2025
This article was first published on May 1, 2002
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