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InDesign / InCopy: shared real-time file syncing solutions?

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    • November 21, 2019 at 10:33 am #1198593
      Brian Groppe
      Member

      Our magazine art directors and editors all work with the Adobe InDesign/InCopy workflow. Our production files are hosted on an in-house server, but we access them through shared Google Team Drive Folders. It allows us to work from any location, in office or remotely, but we’re having issues with file syncing in real time. This is obviously problematic during deadline crunches.

      Since InDesign and InCopy users often access the same document simultaneously, can anyone recommend a remote file sharing setup that works well and syncs in real-time?

    • March 11, 2020 at 7:48 am #12324743
      Kay Harper
      Participant

      Brian, did anyone ever respond to your question? I have the same question regarding team projects in my graphic design classes. We need a way for each team member to work on an InDesign publication that will show everyone’s work and update automatically. Would this be InCopy, I wonder?

    • March 11, 2020 at 10:41 am #12325143
      Brian Groppe
      Member

      Hi Kay,
      You are the first responder to my lonely question.

      I’m not sure InCopy would be the right solution for your graphic design students to use for collaboration. It does allow InCopy editors to open InDesign documents at the same time a document is actively being used by an ID user, the IC user can “check out” text files and make changes, then save and check the text file back in again. But InCopy users only have the text editing tools. They have none of the graphic tools, ie. they cannot resize a text box or anything else.

      As far as I know, an InDesign doc can only be opened by one ID user at a time.

      Brian

    • March 11, 2020 at 12:05 pm #12325343
      David Blatner
      Keymaster

      I responded to Kay’s query on the Private Member forum, too… I’ll just copy and paste that response here:

      InDesign is not really built for real-time collaboration, like Google Docs. InCopy could help with the text parts. But the tool I like most for this is LayoutZone from Automatication: https://automatication.com/index.php?id=13

      Basically you convert sections of a spread, or a whole page or spread to a layout zone (which is just an InDesign document). Then other people can work on that document, and it’s linked back to the master doc. When the file is updated, you just click Update in the Links panel of the master document, and you get the new version. When you’re done, you have the option to convert the zone back into editable InDesign objects in the master doc.

      It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty much magic.

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