CreativePro Forum

Return to Member Forum

• Author
  Posts
• • April 9, 2010 at 6:13 am #55479
    Lee UK

    Member

    I've just discovered something which is probably common knowledge to you guys, but I've read a few articles/discussions about templates and never heard this issue brought up before (and I also think it's slightly confusing) so I'm sharing this just to clarify the rules in case anyone didn't know:

    There are two types of templates, which I will call:

    1. Normal Templates

    When you open a Normal Template, it always opens it as a new “Untitled” file, to protect the original template. So hitting Save brings up the “Save As” dialogue.

    2. Editable templates

    When you open an Editable Template, you are actually editing the template, and hitting Save will always just save (overwrite).

    How do you change a template between the two?

    To change a Normal Template to an Editable one, simply save the file as a template file, then it becomes editable.

    To change an Editable Template back to a Normal Template, you have to do Save As, and save it as a template file, then close the document without saving it again. Now, it's a proper template file again.

    (I think this is right but please correct me if I'm wrong. To be honest, I find it a little confusing, and writing all this down wasn't easy!)

    Hope this was of some interest to someone.

  • April 9, 2010 at 7:13 am #55480
    Theunis De Jong

    Member

    I think there are two types of InDesign files.

    A template opens by default as an Untitled copy; a regular file opens by default as 'original'.

    What's the difference between a template and a regular document? The file extension. If you change it outside of ID, ID will not handle it anything special other than doing its default action on opening.

    Why do I keep saying “by default”? Well … Press Ctrl(/Cmd)+O to open a file. If the file type is “All Readable Files”, you will see both templates and normal files. At the bottom of that dialog, you see “Open As”, with the radio button “Normal” checked — that's so ID will do the default action, depending on the file extension.

    If you want to open a copy of a regular file, choose “Copy”; if you want to open a template for editing, choose “Original”.

• Author
  Posts