Tip of the Week: Fill and Stroke Shortcuts

Useful shortcuts for quickly changing the fill and stroke of selected frames in InDesign.

Mike Rankin

This tip was sent to Tip of the Week email subscribers on May 5, 2016.

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Did you just draw a rectangle and end up with a stroke on it that you didn’t want? You can quickly change the fill and stroke attributes of any selected frame by pressing the following keys:

Press the X key to toggle between the Stroke and Fill attributes.

Press Shift-X and the fill color and stroke color will swap places.

The comma key (,) applies the default solid color (displayed in the Control panel and Tools panel) to the fill/stroke.

The period key (.) applies the default gradient to the fill/ stroke.

The forward slash key (/) sets the current fill/stroke to None.

These shortcuts work in Illustrator, as well.

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This article was last modified on July 25, 2019

This article was first published on May 10, 2016

Comments (8)

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  1. Johanna
    September 20, 2018

    How about toggling fill/stroke in text? I often need to swap stroke and fill color in text, but there don’t seem to be shortcuts into that.

    Reply
    1. Andreas Norén
      September 20, 2018

      Select the text frame. Press J. (Selects text formatting instead of frame formatting) Press Shift+X. That will toggle the text stroke/fill for all text in the frame.

      If you won’t to be able to toggle the fill/stroke on selected text you can assign an addition shortcut “Option+Shift+X”. That will work. Just tried. :)

      Reply
      1. Johanna
        September 20, 2018

        Awesome, THANKS!

  2. Prince Neville
    May 24, 2016

    I would like to receive tips and shortcuts on using Indesign.

    Reply
  3. Soretha
    May 16, 2016

    please subscribe me.

    Reply
    1. David Blatner
      May 16, 2016

      Soretha: If you want to subscribe to our Newsletters, please place your email address in the blue “SIGN UP FOR THE INDESIGN TIP OF THE WEEK” box in the right sidebar.

      Or, you can sign up for any of our newsletters at: https://cpn.co/g/news
      Thanks!

      Reply
  4. Tammy
    May 13, 2016

    Hi Chris M. As requested, you have been added to received Tip of the Week Newsletter. Hope you have a great day!

    Reply
  5. Chris M.
    May 12, 2016

    please subscribe me

    Reply
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