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Object Manipulation
Position an Object Precisely
Why won't my objects move where I tell them to move? I select a frame and enter "2in" in the X Position field of the Control or Transform palette, meaning I want the object two inches in from the left of the page. Crystal clear, right? But when I click out of the field, the object apparently moves where it wants to; sometimes it even hangs way off into the left pasteboard. I've checked the 0/0 marker of the rulers and they're in the default location (upper left corner of my document), so that can't be it.You're a recent QuarkXPress convert, aren't you? You can always tell the type, as they always assume those X and Y coordinates define the upper-left corner of an object. Hey, we've been there. You need to pay attention to the object proxy icon (seen on both the Control and Transform palettes). InDesign looks to this proxy to figure out which part of the object you're referring to when you ask it to transform (move, rotate, resize, and so on). There are 9 possible orientation points on the proxy: the four corners, the center of each of the four edges, and the center of the object (Figure 2-13).
Figure 2-13. The proxy icon is used to set a reference point for a selection.
Long-Term Memory for Paste in Place
Man, do I love the Paste in Place command. My office has never been neater, because it's no longer littered with little scribbled notes of X and Y positions of the various things I've been cutting and pasting all day. The one fly in my ointment: I wish there were a way that Paste in Place could remember the positions of more than one Cut/Copy operation. I wouldn't need to keep going back to a previous page or open the old document to "reload" the clipboard, saving me mucho time.Instead of the Clipboard, use an InDesign Library (File > New > Library). Objects you drag into a Library remember their position on the page you dragged them from. To place a Library item on the current page in the same position as its source, don't drag it out of the Library; instead select it in the Library palette and use the Library palette menu's Place Item command. As long as the current page has the same page size, orientation, and facing pages setting as the source of the item, InDesign automatically places it in the remembered position.
Select an Object Behind Another One
I have a text frame, and behind one of the paragraphs I've placed a tinted rectangle. I need to adjust the tint of the rectangle, but since it's narrower than the frame, I can't get to it! Every time I click on the rectangle with a Selection tool, only the text frame gets selected. I'm so tired of using Arrange > Send to Back/Front . . . so very, very tired.Hold down the Command/Ctrl key while you click on the stack of objects with the Selection or Direct Select tool. The first click selects the top-most object, the second click selects the object right behind it, the third click selects the next one down, and so on. When you've reached bottom, the next click cycles back and selects the top-most object again. If you clicked one time too many, you can cycle backwards through the stack by adding the Option/Alt key to the mix.Another thought: Ever hear of the Layers palette? You could move your text frame to a higher layer, then lock that layer so you can see its items but can't select them. Target the layer holding your tinted rectangle, and you'll find you can click and drag the "behind" objects with ease.
"Select Next Object Below" Doesn't
Instead of Command/Ctrl-clicking on a stack of objects to drill down and select the item I want, I thought I'd be smart and use the Select commands in the chose Object > Select > Next Object Below. But the next object down wasn't selected; an object elsewhere on my spread was selected! I don't get it.Perplexing, isn't it? The problem is that the Select commands aren't "click-aware." They take the entire spread of the current layer into account when figuring out which object is behind or above the currently selected object. When you chose the "Select Next Object Below" command, InDesign probably selected some text frame way off in a corner or something; because according to its computer brain, that was the technically correct choice; it was the next object below in the entire spread.Fortunately, the Select features in the context menu are smarter than the Select features in the Object menu. Select the topmost object, right-click (or Control-click if you use a Mac with just one mouse button) on the topmost object, and choose Next Object Below to select the object immediately below.
Drag an Object That's Behind Another One
Success! I'm able to select the object I want, even though it's completely behind a bunch of other things. Change the fill and stroke, change the font, change the scale, no problem, the palettes know which object I'm talking about. Everything was going so well, then . . . failure! I can't drag it to a different position. The "behind" object is selected, but when I drag, I end up dragging the top object instead (even though it wasn't selected, quite weird).Drag on the "behind" object's center point (the little square icon that appears in the center of a selected object's frame) to move it (Figure 2-14). If you drag from anywhere else on the object, InDesign interprets it as a drag on the top object, as you've discovered. Another option is to Command-click/Ctrl-click until you reach that object and then before you release the mouse button start dragging. The object may not appear to be selected, but when you move the mouse, it moves.
Figure 2-14. Drag from the center handle to move an object that's behind another one.
Can't Select an Object in Front
I see the object, the object prints, and it's in front of any overlapping objects, but I can't select it. What gives?It's almost certainly sitting on a locked layer. Open the Layers palette and see if there's a layer with a lock icon (a pencil with a red line through it); if so, click the icon to "unlock" the layer. You should be able to select the object now as usual. You might want to think about it a bit first, though. Perhaps it's on a locked layer for a reason?
Can Select an Object, but Can't Move it
Here's a strange one. I've got a text frame that I can select, and I can edit the text inside it, but I can't resize it, move it or delete it. And no, it's not on a locked layer.Are you seeing a little padlock cursor appear when you try to drag a handle on it or drag the item itself to move it? That's telling you the text frame has "Lock Position" enabled. Another quick check is to right-click on the item or look in the Object menu to see if there's an "Unlock Position" menu item, if so, that's what happened. Choose that command to unlock it, and the menu item reverts back to "Lock Position." Now you can move and resize the object.
Keyboard Shortcuts for Align and Distribute
Why isn't the Align palette listed in Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts > Product Area: Palette Menus? I click on the palette's align and distribute icons all the time and would like to assign keyboard shortcuts to the ones I use most often.The align and distribute functions are hiding in the Product Area: Object Editing panel of the Edit Keyboard Shortcuts dialog box.
Distribute Oddly-Shaped Objects Evenly
Hi guys, trying to neaten up a photo spread here. The pictures vary in dimension, and I'd like to space them apart by exactly .25 inches. When I select the pictures, enter ".25in" in the Use Spacing field in the Align palette, and click the Distribute Left Edges icon, the pictures end up overlapping each other. I've tried all the icons and can't figure it out. All I want is .25" of space between each picture in a single row.If the pictures were all the same width, you'd be on the right track. For example, if each image was two inches wide, you could enter "2.25in" in the Use Spacing field, and click any of the three Distribute Horizontal icons (Left edge, Center, Right edge). The pictures would space themselves out with .25" of space between each.However, when you're dealing with objects of varying dimensions, you have to use the secret Distribute command called Distribute Spacing (as opposed to Distribute Objects, the one you were using, the default). To see the Distribute Spacing options, choose Show Options from the Align palette menu (Figure 2-15).
Figure 2-15. For some reason, InDesign hides the Distribute Spacing command. Choose Show Options in the Align palette menu to see it.
Overlap Objects Evenly
The Distribute commands are great, but how about the opposite, some Overlap commands? Am I the only one who'd like to be able to exactly specify by how much a number of objects, currently spread all over the place, should align and overlap each other?Yes, you're the only one. But Adobe cares about you so much, they've included that feature in InDesign. All you need to do is enter a negative number (use a hyphen for the negative sign) in either of the two Use Spacing fields in the Align palette.
Align Selected Objects to a Given Object
Illustrator lets you choose which object other objects should align themselves to, and I've grown to rely on that feature. But as far as I can tell, you can't do that InDesign. If I select three objects whose top edges are located in different vertical positions on the page, and click Align Top Edges, the object that's "highest" on the page stays put, and the other two jump up to align with it. But what if I want two of the items to align their top edges with the item that's "lowest" on the page?Select the object you want the others to align themselves to and lock its position (Object > Lock Position) on the page. Now select all the objects, including the locked one, and click the Align or Distribute command you want. Since locked objects can't move, InDesign aligns/distributes the other selected objects to the locked one.If two or more objects are locked, InDesign decides which one should control the action based on its position (e.g., the "higher" locked object would be the one that all the others align their top edges to). Objects that aren't locked jump into alignment with it, the remaining locked objects stay in their original position.
