One of the more common InCopy questions that I get asked is “What version of InCopy should I be using?” The answer honestly, depends on the version of InDesign that is being used in your workflow.
Keep the Versions Consistent
It’s important to understand that with each release of InDesign, there are new features added to the program. In order for InCopy to work with these features, there is almost always a new version of InCopy released as well. These InCopy releases include the features added to InDesign to make the two programs compatible. This is why it’s important to keep the versions of InDesign and InCopy consistent for all users in the workflow. Although mixing versions of InDesign and Incopy could potentially work, you’re playing with fire by doing so especially in a production environment.
Usually But Not Always
There’s always exceptions to the rule right? Recently, Anne-Marie Concepcion brought to my attention that the latest versions of InDesign and InCopy 2014 are in fact not the same version. It seems that as of this writing, InDesign CC 2014 is at version 10.2 and InCopy CC 2014 is at version 10.0. The good news is that although the version are not the same, they do play well together.
Be Aware of this Glitch
Here’s a little glitch that you need to be aware of. If you open an InDesign CC file and save it as an InDesign CC 2014 file, InCopy can open it but you might get an error message about a missing plug-in. The good news is that dismissing this error message allows you to continue working as usual. It seems that InDesign CC 2014 files that are converted from InDesign CC causes this problem. If you create a file directly from InDesign CC 2014, the message no longer appears. If you encounter this problem, a simple solution is to export the InDesign file as an IDML file (InDesign Markup) and then open it and save it back to an InDesign file. After doing this, the problem will no longer occur.
Latest Update
If you do encounter this problem, I encourage you to run the latest Creative Cloud update for InDesign and InCopy. As quickly as this problem popped up, it went away just as quickly. With the latest versions of InDesign (10.2.0.69) and InCopy (10.0.0.70) this problem appears to be fixed, and although the versions are still not exactly the same, they play together just fine.
This is an excellent example of keeping your software up-to-date and the benefits of the Creative Cloud.
This article was last modified on July 11, 2020
This article was first published on April 13, 2015
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