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• • October 8, 2013 at 8:20 am #65704
    Emily

    Participant

    Hey gang!

    I’m a beginner/intermediate InDesign user. Until now, I have only worked on relatively short documents. My company is in the process of getting all of our very lengthy and image-heavy user manuals into InDesign. I’ve never really had to deal with a long document and lots of reference images, so I have LOTS of questions. I really need some sort of InDesign mentor, if anyone is up for that.

    What’s the best way to manage lots of images within your text? Anchored images? Inline images?

    Is there a way to automate placing a certain image into the text using Find/Change or a script? For example, if I wanted to place a small .png image of a question mark icon every time I said “Help Icon.”

    I’m using Find/Change and “tagged” styles (from Chapter 4 of this course https://www.lynda.com/InDesign-tutorials/Using-Word-InDesign-Together/122930-2.html). That’s working out really well for managing copywriters who are using Word and don’t understand Word styles.

    Advice and suggestions are welcome!

    Thanks,

    -Emily

  • October 9, 2013 at 12:17 am #65710
    Tim Hughes

    Member

    Definitely look at using Book. Split the large document into chapters and use Book to manage them.

  • October 10, 2013 at 3:24 pm #65729
    Kelly Vaughn

    Participant

    Hi Emily,

    For the question mark, you may want make out own custom icon using IndyFont Pro, and then set it up as an automatic bullet character.

    Picture-heavy user manuals are what I do for a living. Ping me with your questions and I’ll see what I can do to help out. kelly – at – documentgeek.com

  • October 13, 2013 at 10:38 am #65744
    Dwayne Harris

    Member

    Although I don’t work too much on user manuals, I work on a lot of long documents that have lots of art.

    Since many of those go to ePub, we pretty much have to anchor the art whenever possible.

    The book publishers don’t like us to use the book feature and instead want one large file.

    For your search and replace with the icon, yes it can be done. Anchor the first question mark piece of art, and then copy it (highlight with the type tool). In the replace field, click the arrow and scroll down to “other” and then over to “Clipboard Contents, Formatted.” Then search and replace and the anchored image will be pasted in.

  • October 14, 2013 at 10:00 am #65776
    Anne-Marie Concepcion

    Member

    What Dwayne said! That’s the answer you’re looking for (Find: Help icon; Change: Clipboard Contents, Formatted).

    Emily you’re the first viewer of my Using InDesign and Word Together title at lynda.com I’ve met “in the wild.” Hope you liked it! ;-D

  • October 14, 2013 at 10:34 am #65777
    Emily

    Participant

    Thank you all so much for the help! I really appreciate the feedback.

    Dwayne and Anne-Marie, that’s exactly what I was looking for! I’m definitely going to use this little trick with all of my icons.

    Anne-Marie, I absolutely loved Using InDesign and Word Together. That course was actually the reason I signed up for Lynda.com. I took a few InDesign courses in college, and I figured that I could probably muddle through on my own until I saw your course. I’m currently in the process of moving my company’s technical documentation (which is currently all done in Word) into InDesign. I can’t believe how much easier this whole project is going to be after taking that course! I have it bookmarked so I can watch certain videos over again as I go along.

    I have another quick question about images.

    My document is going to be primarily text (with a few small in-line graphics like the Help icon) with one or two large screen captures per page. I’m working to design a few master pages (one that is just text, one with one large screen capture, and one with two large screen captures). I’m not sure whether I should make these large images inline, anchored, or just totally separate. I was originally going to have them hang out separately because I’m not sure if I can do anchored images with master pages. However, the images will be specific to certain text. If I want to insert or delete something, I need to make sure the images stay with the proper text. This makes me think that I should anchor them.

    I’m planning to make each chapter a separate document, and then combine the chapters into a book for each manual. The courses I took in college only covered making posters and short magazine spreads, so I don’t have any experience in dealing with long documents, tables of contents, books, etc. I’ve been working through Creating Long Documents with InDesign (Mike Rankin) and InDesign CS6 Essential Training (David Blatner) to get some help with this. Does anyone have any tips, advice, or other resources they would recommend?

    Thanks!

  • October 15, 2013 at 9:10 am #65806
    Salieri

    Member

    I anchor everything I can in a long document, because the project manager will always decide to add more content later and there’s inevitably something that gets overlooked when text reflows.

    If you create a master page with a big screenshot on, you can override that image on your spread with CMD+SFT, then relink it to the screenie you need with the Links panel. Assuming they are the same size that should be an easy workflow to manage and they will anchor in place each time. You’ll thank yourself later…

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