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David BlatnerKeymasterThere are some options in that dialog box (I, II, III, a, b, c, etc.), and you can apply a custom character style, but I do not think it is possible to make your own custom format beyond that.
David BlatnerKeymasterHi Gail, here are a couple articles that might help:
andDavid BlatnerKeymasterYou probably could do this with conditional text, but because you’re using styles, my suggestion would be to just change the color of the character style. That is, make it blue before you export for online, and change the character style to Black before print.
That said, here’s a video and article on conditional text:
andFebruary 5, 2021 at 4:19 pm in reply to: Maintaining hyperlinks in a placed InDesign document #14335844David BlatnerKeymasterUnfortunately, no. And what you describe (full URL strings work) is actually due to Acrobat (or the PDF reader), not InDesign. That is, if Acrobat sees something that looks like a link, it turns it into a link automatically. (That’s a preference setting.)
David BlatnerKeymasterI think it’s mostly likely a Word issue. But I do not know. Another idea is to make an italic character style in Word and apply it there (instead of a “local italic style”). InDesign can read Word character styles.
David BlatnerKeymasterYou make excellent points, Justin! I still think Interactive PDF has its place. It’s just not nearly as interactive as any of us want.
10+ years ago, we all assumed that there would be a single format that can do it all—full interactivity (all the stuff you mention), and be a document, and be easily distributed or sold. It’s almost inconceivable that we’re now in the 3rd decade of the 21st century and nothing like that exists. FXL (fixed layout epub) comes close in some ways (it’s based on html, after all), but fails in others. But PDF is the biggest disappointment, for sure.
As you know, back in 2017, there was some hubbub about “Camelot 2”, which I wrote about in this article. But it still hasn’t seen the light of day, and may never. Sigh.
David BlatnerKeymasterThe blue highlighting makes me think that the whole paragraph has local formatting on it. You may need to remove local overrides.
Here are a few suggestions:
Do as much cleanup in Word as possible before importing.
Save as DOCX (instead of .doc… or save as .doc instead of .docx)
Here are some additional articles that may help in cleanup:Import Word Files into InDesign, Remove Local Formatting but Keep Italics and Bold
David BlatnerKeymasterWell, I’m a word guy, first and foremost, so I go back to “interactive” simply meaning “it’s something we interact with.” But to a certain degree, that means a printed book is interactive! How about we put it on a spectrum, or range from 1 to 10 — A book is 1, a PDF is about a 4, and HTML is about 8. (HTML plus plug-ins/add-ons take it to 9 or 10… for example, AR/VR, etc.)
And I agree there’s no bait-and-switch, Justin. I didn’t mean to imply that when I said “click bait.” Click bait is like what we were playing with on these articles:
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https://creativepro.com/i-thought-an-indesign-conference-would-be-boring-and-then-this-happened/David BlatnerKeymasterYou are absolutely right: We agree on just about everything except the title of your article. And I do not begrudge you that, because one must always take article titles with a grain of salt! It’s the internet!
You don’t call onscreen PDFs “interactive” because they don’t have animations, buttons, audio and video. I get that. I do call them “interactive” because people interact with them.
Do I want all the interactivity that I could have with HTML?! Of course! I’ve been pushing Adobe and other people on the PDF standards bodies for years about this. It’s crazy how limited PDF is. But it’s not dead. ;-)
David BlatnerKeymasterYou’re totally right that bookmarks and hyperlinks are part of the regular “PDF (Print)” spec. So I think part of the issue here is that you’re talking about a very specific thing: the item in InDesign’s Export dialog box called “PDF (Interactive)”. That is not the same thing as the generic “Interactive PDF.”
- An Interactive PDF is any PDF that is primarily designed to be viewed on screen and has some interactive features — including hyperlinks. A good example is InDesign Magazine, which is exported from InDesign using PDF (Print) but is designed for on-screen interaction (though some people do print it).
- The PDF (Interactive) feature is a method for exporting a PDF from InDesign that includes a few additional interactive features that PDF (Print) cannot do.
Neither of these is dead. Both have their uses.
As for PDF forms: It’s not helpful to say “they don’t work in all readers.” (There are plenty of HTML features that do not work in all browsers.) Form fields work in enough readers, and they’re extremely well supported in Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader.
There are great reasons to use “interactive PDFs” and there are great reasons to use “PDF (Interactive)”.
As I said, I love what you’re doing with HTML, but it’s still just HTML. You cannot turn it into a document that can be emailed, or downloaded. It is not good for archival purposes, or printing. PDF is an extraordinary format for all those things.
David BlatnerKeymasterWell, I have to respectfully disagree with you, Justin. Interactive PDF is extremely useful in a wide variety of circumstances. Your headline is wonderful clickbait, but it’s not entirely true.
I mean, yes, a lot of Interactive PDF stuff is broken (audio, video, buttons…) and there’s a bunch of stuff that never worked to start with (animations, multi-state objects, etc.)… BUT there are some things that work fine: hyperlinks, bookmarks, and — most importantly — FORMS! If you need to make an interactive form, Interactive PDF is the way to go.
Note to readers: Justin’s company, Ajar Productions, is a sponsor of CreativePro… but more importantly, they make a truly awesome tool called in5, which lets you export HTML from InDesign. I love it! And everyone should know about it. And it is a good replacement for Interactive PDF in some situations. But PDF is still better for some things. :-)
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