Opening and Saving Your Work
In This Chapter
ᮣ Creating a new document
ᮣ Opening documents
ᮣ Saving and exporting documents
ᮣ Exporting document content
ᮣ Recovering information after a crash
You’re eager to create a new document and get started with InDesign. So you launch InDesign, create or open a new document, and begin working. Right? Wrong, sort of. You can just plunge in, but you’re best served if you have an idea before you start of what you want to accomplish. That way, you won’t be staring at a blank screen with no brilliant ideas in mind. After you have an idea of what you want to do, you need to create the document that will hold those brilliant ideas. InDesign lets you apply those ideas from the very start of creating the document and also lets you make changes later on, as you refine your ideas.
This chapter shows you the basics of working with document files, from creating and opening them to saving them.
Setting Up a New Publication
After you launch InDesign, you have two options: You can choose File➪Open (Ô+O or Ctrl+O) to open a previously created document or template, or you can choose File➪New➪Document (Ô+N or Ctrl+N) to create a new document. Creating a new document is where all the fun is because you get to create something yourself, from scratch. Here’s how to create a new document:
52 Part II: Document Essentials
1. Choose File➪New➪Document (Ô+N or Ctrl+N).
The New Document dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 3-1. It’s here that you make many up-front decisions about how you want your new document set up — page size, number of pages, number of columns, and margin width. Although you’re free to change your mind later, you’ll save yourself time and potential headaches by sticking with the basic page parameters you establish in the New Document dialog box.
Figure 3-1:
The New
Document
dialog box
establishes
the basic
framework
for your
pages.
2. If you know exactly how many pages your publication will have, enter the number in the Number of Pages field.
If you don’t know for sure, you can easily add or delete pages later. Just guesstimate.
3. Decide whether to lay out your documents in a spread or as separate pages.
Here are a few pointers:
• If you’re creating a multipage publication that will have a spine, such as a book, catalog, or magazine, select Facing Pages.
• If you’re creating a one-page document, such as a business card, an ad, or a poster, don’t select Facing Pages.
• Some publications, such as flip charts, presentations, and threering bound documents, have multiple pages but use only one side of the page. For such documents, don’t check Facing Pages, either.
4. If you want to flow text from page to page in a multipage document, such as a book or a catalog, check Master Text Frame.
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If you check this box, InDesign automatically adds a text frame to the document’s master page and to all document pages based on this master page. Checking this option saves you the work of creating a text frame on each page and manually threading text through each frame. (See Chapter 6 for more information about using master text frames.)
5. In the Page Size area, you can choose one of the predefined sizes from the pop-up menu.
Note the new options in InDesign CS4 for various screen sizes; choose one of these options if you’re creating pages that you’ll export for further Web production in Adobe Dreamweaver or Flash Professional.
6. Specify margin values in the Margins area.
If Facing Pages is checked, Inside and Outside fields are available in the Margins area. Designers often specify larger inside margins for multipage publications to accommodate the fold at the spine. If Facing Pages isn’t checked, Left and Right fields replace the Inside and Outside fields. You can also specify margin values by clicking the up/down arrows associated with the fields.
7. To specify how many columns your pages have, enter a value in the Columns field.
You can also specify the number of columns by clicking the up/down arrows associated with the Column field.
8. Specify a gutter distance in the Gutter field.
The
gutter is the space between columns. You can also specify a gutter width value by clicking the up/down arrows associated with the Gutter field.
9. Click the More Options button to access the Bleed and Slug area of the New Document dialog box.
Clicking the More Options button provides options to set bleed and slug areas, as shown earlier in Figure 3-1. (Note that the button then changes to Fewer Options.)
A
bleed area is a margin on the outside of the page for objects you want to extend past the edge of the page — you want them to extend at least 1⁄8 inch so that if the paper shifts during printing, no white space appears where the image should be (touching the edge of the page).
The
slug area is an area reserved for printing crop marks, color plate names, and other such printing information — some output devices will cut these off during printing unless a slug area is defined. For both bleed and slug areas, you can set the top, bottom, left, and right margins independently.
10. Click OK to close the New Document dialog box.
Your new, blank document appears in a new document window. Figure 3-2 shows the window of a newly created document that uses the settings shown in Figure 3-1. 08_388488-ch03.indd 53
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54 Part II: Document Essentials
Figure 3-2:
The results
of the settings in
the New
Document
dialog box
shown in
Figure 3-1.
You can bypass the New Document dialog box by pressing Shift+Ô+N or Ctrl+Shift+N. When you use this method, the most recent settings in the New Document dialog box are used for the new document.
Opening documents
Opening documents with InDesign is pretty much the same as opening documents with any program. Simply choose File➪Open (Ô+O or Ctrl+O), select the document you want to work on, and then click the Open button. But InDesign offers a few options for opening documents that you don’t find in every program. For example, you can
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Open more than one document at a time. Just select multiple documents in the Open a File dialog box.
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Open a copy of a document instead of the original. This option keeps the original file from being overwritten accidentally — very helpful if you’re making several variations of one document.
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Open a template under its own name. This setting makes editing templates easier than it is with other programs, specifically QuarkXPress.
Chapter 3: Opening and Saving Your Work
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Open documents created with Versions 6.0, 6.5, and 7.0 of PageMaker and Versions 3.3, 4.0, and 4.1 of both QuarkXPress and QuarkXPress Passport. Unfortunately, you can’t open files created in later versions of QuarkXPress (or in any version of Microsoft Publisher) unless you buy a separate utility from Markzware. (Go to www.InDesignCentral.com for a link to these utilities.)
To open an InDesign file (any version from 1.0 to CS4), follow these steps:
1. Choose File➪Open (Ô+O or Ctrl+O).
The Open a File dialog box, shown in Figure 3-3, appears.
Figure 3-3:
The Open a
File dialog
box.
2. Locate and open the folder that contains the documents you want to open.
Select a single filename or hold down the Ô or Ctrl key and select multiple filenames.
On a Mac, the Open a File dialog box will display all files in a supported file format with a filename extension. The dialog box includes a Preview pane that displays a thumbnail version of the selected file or, more commonly, its icon. Use All Documents in the Enable pop-up menu to display files without the expected filename extensions (typically, those transferred or copied from a computer running Mac OS 9).
56 Part II: Document Essentials
In Windows, the Open a File dialog box will display any supported file formats that have a supported filename extension. Use All Formats in the Files of Type pop-up menu to display files with no filename extensions. (Typically, these files are created on an older version of the Mac OS.) The Files of Type pop-up menu offers several options: PageMaker 6.0–7.0 files, QuarkXPress 3.3–4.1 files, InDesign files, InDesign Interchange, Adobe PDF Creation Settings Files, and All Formats. Choose any of these options to display a specific file format in the file list. (The Adobe PDF Creation Settings Files option is for experts, so don’t worry about it for now.)
3. Select Open Normal at the bottom of the dialog box to open the original version of the document or a copy of a template; click Open Original to open the original version of the document or of a template; click Open Copy if you just want to open a copy of it.
In Windows, the options are labeled simply Normal, Original, and Copy and appear under the Open As label.
When you open a copy of a document, it’s assigned a default name (Untitled-1, Untitled-2, and so on).
(Chapter 5 covers templates.)
4. Click Open to close the dialog box and open the selected files.
Each document you opened appears in a separate document window. The page and view magnification used when the document was last saved is also used when you open the document. (Chapter 1 covers document views.)
Opening foreign formats
One of InDesign’s hallmarks is its ability to open
up the converted files by hand. In some cases,
documents from other programs and convert
you may find that the amount of cleanup work
them into InDesign documents. You can open
is greater than if you simply re-create the docudocuments created in PageMaker 6.0, 6.5, and ment from scratch in InDesign — don’t panic.
7.0 as well as QuarkXPress and QuarkXPress
And be happy when your documents convert
Passport 3.3, 4.0, and 4.1.
effortlessly.
But beware: InDesign’s ability to open a forThe good news is that InDesign will alert eign-format file doesn’t mean you get a perfect
you to any import issues of PageMaker and
translation. The other programs’ formats and
QuarkXPress files with a dialog box that appears
capabilities are so different from InDesign’s after the import is complete. that you should expect to spend time cleaning
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Saving documents
When you open a new document, it’s assigned a default name — Untitled-1, Untitled-2, and so on — and the first page is displayed in the document window. At this point, you’re like a painter in front of a blank canvas. You can work on your layout without giving it a name, but you’re better off giving it a name by saving it as soon as possible so that you don’t lose any changes to a power outage or other system problem.
The second group of commands in InDesign’s File menu — Close, Save, Save As, Save a Copy, Check In, and Revert — provide options for saving the active (frontmost) document. Here’s a rundown of what each command does: ߜ
Close (Ô+W, or Ctrl+W or Ctrl+F4) closes the active document. If the document has never been saved or if it has been changed since it was last saved, a dialog box lets you save, close without saving, or cancel and return to the document.
To close multiple windows at once, use the shortcuts Option+Shift+Ô+W
or Ctrl+Alt+Shift+W.
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Save (Ô+S or Ctrl+S) saves changes you’ve made to the active document since you last saved. (If you choose Save for a document that hasn’t yet been saved, the Save As dialog box appears.)
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Save As (Shift+Ô+S or Ctrl+Shift+S) lets you save a copy of the active document using a different name (or with the same name in a different folder). When you choose Save As — and when you choose Save for an unsaved document — the Save As dialog box, shown in Figure 3-4, appears. This dialog box lets you create or choose a folder for the document, as well as name the document.
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Check In saves the current document as a version within a Version Cue project. This latest save will be considered a version of the previously saved file. (This expert feature is not covered in this book.) ߜ
Save a Copy lets you create a copy of the active document in a different (or in the same) folder using a different (or the same) name. When you use the Save a Copy command, the original document remains open and retains its original name. It differs from Save As only in that it keeps the original document open.
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Revert undoes all changes you’ve made to a document since you last saved it.
58 Part II: Document Essentials
Figure 3-4:
The Save As
dialog box.
Exporting document content
InDesign’s Save commands (Save, Save As, and Save a Copy) let you save documents and templates in InDesign’s native file format. But the Export command (File➪Export [Ô+E or Ctrl+E)) lets you save the stories — and in some cases stories and whole layouts — from InDesign documents in several formats: InDesign Interchange, Rich Text Format (RTF), Text Only, InDesign Tagged Text, Encapsulated PostScript (EPS), Portable Document Format (PDF), JPEG, Flash video (SWF), and Flash project (XFL).
The ability to export to the two Flash formats is new to InDesign CS4. Gone is the ability to export to the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) image format. Note that when exporting a file, you need to choose a format from the Format menu (Mac) or Save as Type menu (Windows).
Here are your format options in more detail:
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InDesign Interchange format: You can make your InDesign CS4 files readable by InDesign CS3 users by saving your files in the InDesign Interchange CS3 format. (Only InDesign CS3 and CS4 can open
InDesign Interchange CS3 files.)
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Chapter 3: Opening and Saving Your Work
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InDesign Markup (IDML) format: This format can be opened only by InDesign CS4 or custom software designed to handle this new format. It’s essentially an interchange format for outsiders.
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Word-processing formats: If you place the text cursor into a story, you can export its text (select a range of text if you want to export only that selection) into one of two formats: RTF, for import into word processors with only basic formatting retained; and Text Only, for import into word processors that don’t support RTF (with Text Only, note that no formatting is retained).
You can save only one text file at a time. If you need to export several stories from the same document, you must do so one at a time.
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InDesign Tagged Text format: If text is selected via the Type tool, you can save the story in the InDesign Tagged Text format for editing in a word processor and later reimporting into InDesign with all formatting retained.
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Production formats: If text or a frame is selected via the Type tool or the Direct Selection tool, you can save the document — not just the story —
in EPS or PDF formats for use by prepress tools and service bureaus or for import into other applications as pictures.
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Online formats: If text or a frame is selected via the Type tool or the Direct Selection tool, you can save the document — not just the story —
in XML format for use in online database-oriented, content-management systems. (XML is an advanced feature not covered in this book.) You can save as a specific page, spread, or text selection into JPEG files for use as online graphics.
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Multimedia formats: You can export your document to two Adobe Flash format: the SWF play-only format and the XFL format that lets you further work on the file in Adobe Flash Professional. Furthermore, the PDF format mentioned previously in this list can also contain multimedia elements, such as page transitions, sound, and video.
Two separate options are available for the entire document (no matter what tool is active) or for whatever objects are selected. One is File➪Export for Dreamweaver, which lets you export InDesign layouts to the structured HTML format for use in Web creation programs such as (but not limited to) Adobe Dreamweaver. The other is File➪Export for Digital Editions, which lets you create a special type of online multimedia document, called an e-book. Chapter 24 explains the basics for these two types of documents. Note that these two menu options had different names in previous versions of InDesign. 60 Part II: Document Essentials
Recovering from Disaster
When you work on InDesign documents, make sure that you follow the first rule of safe computing: Save early and often.
InDesign includes an automatic-recovery feature that protects your documents in the event of a power failure or a system crash. As you work on a document, any changes you make after saving it are stored in a separate, temporary file. Under normal circumstances, each time you choose Save, the information in the temporary file is saved to the document file. The data in the temporary file is important only if you aren’t able to save a document before a crash. (A word of warning: Although InDesign’s automatic recovery feature is a nice safety net, you should still be careful to save your work often.)
If you suffer a system crash, follow these steps to recover your most recent changes:
1. Relaunch InDesign or, if necessary, restart your computer and then launch InDesign.
2. If automatic-recovery data is available, InDesign automatically opens the recovered document and displays the word “Recovered” in the document’s title bar.
This “Recovered” indicator lets you know that the document contains changes that weren’t included in the last saved version.
3. If you want to save the recovered data, choose File➪Save (Ô+S or Ctrl+S).
“Recovered” is removed as part of the filename, and InDesign asks whether you want to overwrite the old file.
Overwriting the old file is easier than using File➪Save As (Shift+Ô+S or Ctrl+Shift+S) and entering a name — unless you do want to save a copy of the file in case you want to go back to the old version later. If you want to use the last saved version of the document (and disregard the recovered data), close the file (File➪Close [Ô+W or Ctrl+W]) without saving and then opening the file (File➪Open [Ô+O or Ctrl+O]).
Sometimes, InDesign can’t automatically recover the documents for you. Instead, it gives you the choice of recovering any files open during a crash or power outage, saving the recovery data for later, or deleting the recovery data. You typically want to recover the files immediately.