The Secret to Naming InCopy Stories
It sounds like a simple thing doesn’t it? You name your InCopy stories using a variety of different conventions or based on the content of the story and that’s it. There’s not much mystery in the process until you find yourself trying to rename the story or a copy of the story for use in another project. Even after renaming the file in the Finder or Windows Explorer, the old name still shows in the Assignment panel. This happens a lot when you want to re-run a story in a current issue of a publication that was originally slated for a previous issue. As hard as you try, you just can’t get the name to update.
Look to the metadata
When an InCopy story is originally saved, the physical file name is also assigned as metadata to the file which is actually what appears in the Assignment panel. In order to update the name that appears in the Assignments panel, you need to open the .icml file using InCopy and choose File > Content File Info. In the Content Information dialog box, you’ll see the old name (the name that appears in the Assignment panel) located in the Document Title field. You’ll also notice that even though the physical name of our file is FeatureStory_July2015.icml, the title of the dialog box shows “Content Information for FeatureStory_April2014 (the old name).
To change the name, simply enter a new name in the Document Title field and click OK. Save the file and when you return to the Assignments panel in InDesign, you’ll see an out of date icon appear next to the name of the story. Simply click the Update Content icon at the bottom of the Assignments panel and watch the name update to reflect the new name entered in the Content File Info dialog box.
It’s not necessary to update the name in any workflow, but it can be confusing to editorial staff to see a name in the Assignments panel that doesn’t apply to the current issue. With this little tip, you can name content appropriately and update the names to reflect the current issue or the content that they are trying to convey.
Testing.