I had the opportunity the other day to open a file sent to me by someone I don’t know. I realized that I went through a few ingrained procedures that I usually do when I open a strange file.
I also realized that this is a good list of things to go through for anyone who needs to work on someone else’s file. I call this a Pre-Work Check.
(Note: These steps don’t have to be followed in the exact same order although some steps will necessarily follow the others.)
- Ignore any notice that fonts are missing, especially if you’re not going to edit any text. In my case I was looking just at the swatches and separations for the document. I didn’t really need to worry about missing fonts.
- If you do need to handle missing fonts it is better to wait till the document is open and then handle things through Find Font. (Also looking through for any pink higlights for missing fonts.) My reason for this is it is easier to handle missing fonts onces you have scouted through the pages and masters for the document.
- Ignore any notice that images are missing or modified. Once again it is a better to wait until you’ve had a chance to look at the images as well as their status in the Links panel.
- Look in the Links panel for missing or modified links. I like to use the Go to Link command to see exactly what the link is and to watch what happens if I do update the link.
- Open the Pages panel and look through the document. Check out how many pages are in the file. Is this what you expected? Or is a 100-page book missing 99 pages? You might not be working on the right file and can call your client (or co-worker) to find out what’s going on.
- Take a quick look to see if there are any overset symbols. This could be a problem later on although it is not that vital if you do have missing fonts.
- Look at the Swatches panel. Do you see any colors in addition to the default swatches? Do you see colors on the pages that are not in the default swatches. This is a hint that you need to choose the Add Unnamed Colors command to clean up those missing swatches.
- Look at the Paragraph Styles panel. Are there styles defined? Look through them and try to get a handle on the style names. If necessary, click into each type of paragraph element and see if you understand the naming convention.
- Do the same with the Character Styles panel.
- And finally do the same with the Object Styles.
- Check out the master pages for the document. See which masters are applied to what pages. See if some masters are based on others.
- Zoom out from the document and scroll quickly through the pasteboard. Find out what objects are scattered around the pasteboard.
- Look at the Layers panel. If there are multiple layers click them on and off to understand what objects are supposed to go on what layers.
Advanced steps: If this is a document that you need to work with check out the following Preferences to make sure you are comfortable with the preferences:
- Check to see if the apply leading to paragraphs is chosen. I like it off, but would be confused if it were turned on.
- Check to see if the text wrap works downward only option is chosen. I hate that setting but others might turn it on.
I welcome any additional steps from you all!
This article was last modified on December 18, 2021
This article was first published on April 5, 2008
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