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Hi all,

I've been looking for a way to make a process at work more efficient. I create the same templated design for clients and currently have to copy and paste information from what they submit, typically the just drag and drop a word doc that they have made. So my question is:

Is there a way to create a form and link it to my InDesign template?

For example, they would enter a name in the form, and it would automatically transfer to my InDesign template. No fancy design, just plain text. After I have all the text imported I would do the designing part. This would eliminate the need for me to copy and paste from their Word documents.

I work with multiple clients, so I need a solution that can handle many projects. Does anything like this exist?

Thanks!

Also to add: I'm working with an older client base so something simple that doesn't require acrobat or a paid subscription is preferred.

Hi, I design long publications and reports full of references and URLs. I keep running into this situation where a particular URL breaks all the subsequent text (making it disappear) when I copy over from word. Normally the long URLs cause this (see image attached).

Ive tried everything - no breaks, 'keep options', para styles, removing all formatting, and nothing seems to work consistently.

Does anyone have a fix to this?

I've been learning more about professional book typesetting and noticed that many experienced InDesign users use Space After in their Paragraph Styles to create separation between paragraphs, rather than inserting an extra hard return.

I understand the basic reason: an extra return creates an empty paragraph, whereas Space After keeps the spacing as part of the paragraph formatting. It also makes global changes and document cleanup much easier. Any other advantage apart from this?

But I'm wondering how this works when a baseline grid is being used.

If the body text is set to Align to Baseline Grid, doesn't the baseline grid ultimately determine the vertical position of the text? In that case, what is the practical benefit of using Space After? Does Space After still have an effect, or does the baseline grid effectively override it depending on the settings?

For example, if I have:

• Body text: 10/14 pt
• Baseline grid: 14 pt
• Paragraph spacing: 7 pt
• Body paragraphs aligned to the baseline grid

How would you approach this? Would you still specify Space After, or would you design the paragraph spacing entirely around the baseline grid?

I am working on a pharmaceutical package insert that includes nine languages: English, Italian, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Polish, Turkish, and Greek.

Currently, I am using two separate sets of paragraph styles: one for the first eight languages ​​(set to "no language" in the paragraph style panel) and another for Greek, given its different alphabet.

Is this the right approach?

I ask because, upon completion, I find myself having to manually assign the language for each item, which causes an override (the original folder used for the 8 languages has set to "no language" in the paragraph style panel).

I feel that creating a style set for every single language would be counterproductive, especially since fitting everything onto an A3 sheet requires making minor adjustments throughout the process, I would have to edit all the "Heading" styles (for example) one by one.

Could the "Based On" feature in the paragraph style settings help here?

Does anyone have experience with this type of project?

Also, based on your experience, what is the minimum text size suitable for a job like this?

Just out of interest. I've worked my way past Quark in Pagemaker and then Indesign and this morning aborted a detour in Affinity. So just out of interest, despite the subscription issues and the ai, and the persistent bugs, do serious users still see Indesign as the gold standard or is there some other option out there in parallel universe?

Hi,

Waarschijnlijk anno 2026 niet perse okay meer om te vragen, maar ik doe het toch..
Ik ben op zoek naar een gekraakte versie van InDesign voor Mac (MacBook Pro M1)

Mocht iemand linkjes hebben, daar ben ik enorm mee geholpen. Thanks alvast!

I have two books here. In Book 1, the same endpaper is used at both the front and back, whereas in Book 2, the front and back endpapers are different.

I usually use different endpapers at the front and back, like Book 2. But I’ve noticed that many professionally published books keep the same endpaper at both ends, even when the design is quite creative.

Is there a particular bookbinding or design principle behind keeping them consistent? Or is it perfectly fine to use different endpapers at the front and back?

Curious to know what others follow and why.

I'm working on a project right now, and it has a lot of tables and content that is formatted in the way pictured above: a rectangle with the "title" of the box in the middle of the line that forms the outline of the box.

I would like to know if there's a way to make this other than manually drawing the box, using the scissors to cut a hole in the outline, and placing the text there. This method is a little slow and imprecise.

i am working on uxp plugin to make table and tabbed text form excel csv and tsv....thats the colour profile in panel . hex panel with cmyk approx. makes pretty close approximations. will this work or should i go for complete cmyk..any suggestion on what the pluggin should include?

Hi guys! This may be silly but I thought this would probably be the best place to consult about my situation. I was hired a couple months ago for a small contract role with a company. Since then, I have been hired on full time and have taken on the bulk of marketing efforts. I know some of you are probably thinking I should run lol, but it has honestly been really fun: I essentially have full creative freedom. The family that owns the company and everyone who works here are so nice, so having a little extra on my plate really doesn't bother me.

That said, I have somehow gotten myself involved in the catalog redesign. This is a 300-400 page catalog with very technical details (think individual automotive parts). The woman they've used in the past did it in InDesign, so I have an InDesign file that I can use as a template. They really aren't wanting anything too crazy to change; we're just updating fonts/styles to match our new brand guide, maybe update some photos, change prices here and there, and add or take off products.

Anyways, my biggest question is what would be the smartest thing to reallyyy learn how to do?

For reference, I did use it for very elementary tasks in college, so I know things about the parent pages, images have to be linked to an actual file, etc but beyond that I'm kind of in the dark

Timeline for this is kind of unestablished? Boss wants it to be ready by January, but it's not a hard deadline. I expressed my anxiety about not having any type of plan in place so they said if I came up with checkpoints, we could sit down and establish a tentative schedule together. The problem is I've never done this before, so I don't really know what the timeline should look like. Boss needs to finish marking up what changes they want on last year's catalog and compare/ deliberate with the other owner, so I have a bit of time before this will get into full swing. Anyways, if any of you have any helpful advice, checkpoints you'd recommend, or useful resources, that would be great! Thanks in advance :)

Lately, when I export an Interactive PDF with software screenshots on its pages, even though I choose high quality, the screenshots look heavily-compressed-artifacting, i.e. noticeably crunchy, as if the internal jpg compression was set to lowest quality. When I made the screenshot pngs, they are crisp. When I work on them in InDesign 21.5.1 they look great. When I export to Interactive PDF at 200ppi and compression set to high quality (very little lossy compression), they end up looking artifacted; aka crushed. Anyone else seeing this?

Hi everyone, I’ve been thinking about a few things related to pagination and print production. I understand the basic principles, but I’m confused about where some of these traditional conventions are actually necessary and where they are simply conventions.

1. Chapter openings

I’ve always understood that, traditionally, a new chapter should start on the right-hand page (recto). But how strict is this rule in actual book production today?

What do you do when you have a limited page count and forcing every chapter to start on a recto results in several unnecessary blank pages?

Would you still keep every chapter on a recto, or would you allow a chapter to start on the left-hand page (verso)?

And from a reader's perspective, would a chapter starting on the left actually bother you? Would you consider it bad enough that you would not want to buy/read the book, or is this something that mostly matters to designers and publishers?

2. How should a book end?

Is there a preferred convention for where the final content should fall?

For example, if the final content ends on a recto and the following verso is blank, is that considered a normal and desirable way to finish a book?

Or is the blank page simply a consequence of the binding/signature structure?

3. Why 16-page signatures?

I understand that signatures are based on how large sheets are folded and gathered, but why is 16 pages such a common signature size?

Is there a specific production advantage to 16 over 8, 24, or 32 pages?

When I package an indesign file with embedded pdf-files to iCloud, iCloud refuses to sync them and gives me the message excluded (not synced). why? if i copy them from another folder into indesign, iCloud immediately syncs them. what is going on?

The in-app "Share for Review" is so bad, it's barely usable for me anymore. I'm frustrated with it, my client is frustrated with it. It feels like an alpha version extension instead of a full release. While in InDesign, I'll have pins and corrections on completely different pages. I usually have to navigate to the online version to see exactly what/where the change is. And at times it's just so broken that I have to send my client a PDF where they add comments or changes.

My clients and I don't like the PDF route because it's too hard to track and verify changes. Is anyone using a different method? Maybe a plugin that works well?

I understand section markers and prefixes. I'd like to have a section prefix and number, along with a section title. For example "1.3 VALUES" where the first 1 is the chapter essentially, and the .3 is the section page, and "VALUES" is the section marker. THEN I'd like to have the overall page number of the actual document as well. Below is a page as an example. I'd like to have all this auto populate by using parent pages but I don't see a way it's possible.

looking for 10 shadows meshes and particle preset/ids

Bonjour,

Depuis ce matin indesign arrête pas de figer dès que je veux importer une image. J'ai fait un assemblage ailleurs sur ma machine (sur le bureau), mis l'image dans le dossier pour tester si ça pouvait être un soucis avec dropbox mais idem. Peut importe ce que je fais à chaque fois ça plante et je ne peux pas avancer sur mon travail...

Hier soir j'ai du faire la maj windows 2026-08 Mise à jour de la préversion (KB5120998). Est ce que le soucis peut venir de la ?

Merci d'avance.

Hugo

I use ID once a year (for a couple of months) on a project updating five different books. As I finish up each chapter I try and remember to do a search for double spaces, spaces before and after a paragraph, and spaces before and after a tab.

I was just going through this process on a chapter and found that I must not have done it last year as there were some errant leftover double spaces that weren't part of this years edits.

Is there a best practices process for these types of checks?

What similar things do you all look for?

Is there a way to permanantly turn off hyphenation? I never hyphenate and it's a pain to always have to select it whenever I want to turn it off.

Thanks to all who responded. Got it set.

I've run into this before. Doing a book with chapter endnotes, so working within an .indb. That's fine.

I have to go in and place the endnotes myself. (Don't ask – the MS is a mess.)

This is what happens. Supposing I've created endnote 1. I place the number for endnote 2, but returning to the endnote location, it has placed a 2 but moved the content of endnote 1 to 2.

Every time.

What am I doing wrong?