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Guideline Grief
Create a Spread Guide on a Single Page
I need a guideline that reaches across the whole spread! I know I can drag a guide out of the ruler but sometimes it goes across just one spread and sometimes it goes across just a single page.You can always create a spread guide in InDesign by dragging a guide out of a ruler and releasing the mouse button over the pasteboard. But that doesn't help when you're zoomed in and can't see the pasteboard. Fortunately, if you hold down the Command/Ctrl key while you drag out a guideline, it will always come in as a spread guide.
Snap Ruler Guides to Tick Marks
A few times in my InDesign life, I've been able to drag a ruler guide and drop it on the page where I want, usually at an even division of the rulers: 12p6, 17.25" and so on. The majority of the time, guides drop at weird locations like 12p6.4215 or 17.6011". I have to select the guide and use the Control or Transform palette X and Y position fields to move it to a more useable location.This is one of David's favorite InDesign tricks so simple and yet so helpful: Hold down the Shift key while you drag a ruler guide and it will snap to the nearest ruler increment ("tick mark").
Clear Some of the Guidelines
I've inherited a document from someone who added too many guides to the page, and I'd like to clear some out not all, just some. So I grab the Selection tool, click the first guide I want to get rid of, and press the Delete key. Same for the next guide, and the next guide. Three down, 47 to go. Click, delete, click, delete, click, delete, are we having fun yet? No.After you select the first guide, hold down the Shift key to add guides to your selection, and get rid of them with one hit of the Delete key. That'll save you some steps.Even better: Use the Selection tool to drag a selection rectangle over a group of guides. You don't have to drag over the entire length of the guides, just a part of them. As long as no part of a page object falls in the selection rectangle, this maneuver will select the guides alone, allowing you to clear them with a tap on the Delete key. (If part of an object does lie within the selection rectangle, only the object(s) are selected, and guides are ignored. Figure 2-16.)
Figure 2-16. Plow a selection rectangle through a bunch of ruler guides to select them all.
Clear All the Guidelines
I keep searching through the menus for one that says Delete Guides. Sadly, the little elves never add one while I'm sleeping. C'mon, guys! I can't believe Adobe left this one out.Hey, we agree with you, pal. Smells like an oversight. The good news is that there are at least a couple ways to remove all the ruler guides from the current page/spread, and they're both fast and easy.Via the menu:
Choose Create Guides from the Layout menu. Don't enter anything into the Row and Column fields (or reset them to 0 if there's another number there). Turn on the "Remove Existing Ruler Guides" checkbox at the bottom checkbox and click OK. Bob's your uncle, the ruler guides are gone.Via the keyboard:
Press Command-Option-G/Ctrl-Alt-G to select all the guides in the current page/spread. Press Delete and they're gone.Via a script:
The previous methods only delete one spread's guides at a time. This AppleScript deletes every guide in your document:
tell application "Adobe InDesign CS2"
delete every guide of document 1
end tell
Align and Distribute Guides
I dragged out four guides and need them spaced exactly 14p6 apart. So I have to spend twenty minutes in deep communion with the rulers, Control palette fields and my calculator, trying to figure out things like, "Is 39p3 is an even multiple of 14p6?"If you haven't noticed it by now, we'll clue you in: Guides can be selected with the Selection tool just like any other object in InDesign. Similarly, multiple guides can be selected (Shift-click to add additional ones to the selection) and acted upon by commands in many of the menu bars and palettes.Knowing that, here are two possible fixes for your situation:Select all four guides, and use one of the Align palette's Distribute commands, with "14p6" entered in the Use Spacing field, to space them out (Figure 2-17).
Figure 2-17. The Align/Distibrute commands work on ruler guides too.
Change Guide Colors on the Fly
It's nice that I can change the default colors for all the ruler guides (and column/margin guides etc.) in the Preferences dialog box, but I want more. I'd like some ruler guides to be one color, and others to be a different color. I thought I could select a few guides (Shift-click with a Selection tool) and use the Colors or Swatches palette to change their colors, but it doesn't work. What gives? It's all possible if you know where to look. To change the colors of certain ruler guides, select them and choose a different color in the Layout > Ruler Guides dialog box (or right-button click and choose Ruler Guides from the context menu).
Create Mixed-Width Columns
I want three columns on my pages: Two wide ones for the main stories and one narrow one on the outside for miscellany. The Margins and Columns dialog box doesn't let me do this, it always creates columns of even width.Create your base number of columns with Layout > Margins and Columns. Click the OK button to close the dialog box, then use the Selection tool to drag the column gutters (the two vertical guides defining the space between two columnsthey move in unison) to the position you want. Note that column guides are locked by default in InDesign CS2, so you must first select View > Grids & Guides > Lock Column Guides to turn that option off.To drag a column guide, you have to click on one of the two guides, not the gutter space between the guides. Unfortunately, there's no way to position the guides precisely with the Control palette, so remember to hold down the Shift key while you drag (which snaps the guides to the nearest ruler tick mark).
Locking Column Guides
I'm finding that it's too easy to move column guides accidentally! How do I lock them in place?In InDesign CS2 you can lock column guides by choosing View > Grids & Guides > Lock Column Guides. However, in InDesign CS, you, um, well, er . . . you can't lock them. You just have to be extra careful when clicking around column guides. Or, forget the column guides feature entirely and drag out your own guides on the master page. Regular page guides can be locked or even placed on a locked layer in either version.
Change Margin Guides Throughout a Document
I accidentally specified the wrong margins when I created this document, and didn't realize it till I had laid out a bunch of pages. To change the margin settings to what they should be, I tried going to File > Document Setup, but "Margins" is not a choice there. (Yet Bleed and Slug are there go figure!) So I went to Layout > Margins and Columns and entered the settings I wanted, but that only changed it for the current page I was on. My document has 48 pages, do I have to do this to every single page?If you ever find yourself about to do the same action to every page in your document, think "master page." Single-click the name of the master page in the Pages palette to make it active (shift-click additional master page icons if you have more than one), then go to Margins and Columns, make your changes and click OK.Since (assumably) all your document pages are based on master pages (even if you never touch a master page, that's the default behavior), changing the margins settings on the master will force all document pages to reflect the same margin and column settings. Note that changes you make to a master page's margins and columns will not affect any document pages already customized by an individual hit from the Margins and Columns dialog box.Margins and Columns can also affect more than one page or master page at a time; just select the pages you want in the Pages palette before choosing it.
Margins and Columns Don't Change Page Items
No matter what I do, the changes I make to the Margins and Columns dialog box don't affect the objects on my page. Sure, the margins change, but the text and picture frames on my pages don't! I've even tried chanting "Lorum Ipsum" while burning candles in a dimly-lit room. No dice.Yes, this one always seems to trip up ex-QuarkXPress users. You need to take a trip to Layout > Layout Adjustment. This is the feature that controls whether changes to your margins and columns (and page size alterations, too) are applied to objects on your page. By default, it's turned off so you don't accidentally mess up your layout. Turn the feature on and InDesign suddenly pays attention to all the frames and lines that are within a couple points from a margin or column guide.
To Delete the Undeletable Guide
Is it my imagination or do some ruler guides just refuse to leave the building? No matter what I do, including checking the View menu to confirm that Lock Guides is off, there are some I can't delete. How do I get rid of these loath-some undeadand how did they get that way, so I can prevent it from happening again?If you can select the guide but you can't move or delete it, you or someone else working on the file probably locked the guide into position (Object > Lock Position). To clear a position-locked guide, select it, unlock it (Object > Unlock Position), and delete it. (Note: Turning on the "Remove Existing Ruler Guides" option from the Layout > Create Guides dialog will also remove position-locked guides.)If you can't select the guide, it's probably sitting on a master page or on a locked layer. Still quite fixable. To delete a master page guideline on a document page, Command-Shift-click/Ctrl-Shift-click on the guide to override it and select it in one fell swoop, then press Delete. (Or you could just go to the master page and select it/delete it there.)Finally, to delete a guide on a locked layer, you have to unlock the layer. Click on the red-slashed pencil icon next to the name of the layer in the Layers palette so it goes away. Now you can select the guide and delete it. Don't forget to lock the layer again (by clicking in the same square in the Layers palette) when you're done. It's common courtesy.
Create Object Guides
It would make my life so much easier if I could select an object, wave a magic wand, and have InDesign create four guides, one on each edge of the object. Since Harry and Hermione aren't anywhere nearby, I'm doomed to manual drudgery and have to create the guides myself.When you drag a guide near an object, it usually doesn't snap to the side of the object. Here's the trick: First select the object with the Selection tool, then drag the guide on top of the object's corner or side handles. Guides do snap to those!However, if you need to quickly add guides to all four sides of an object, it's time for a script. The InDesign CS installation disc comes with sample Scripts that work in both Mac and Windows. One of the scripts, Add Guides, is your magic wand. Install it (drag the script into the InDesign>Preset>Scripts folder) and run it from the Scripts palette on a selected object (Figure 2-18).
Figure 2-18. The AddGuides.js script can create a number of different guides for the selected object.
Disappearing Guides
Help! Suddenly all my guidelines are gone. Not just the ruler guides, but also all my margin and column guides, frame edges, even things I had on the pasteboard! I double-checked the View menu to make sure Hide Guides was off (it was) and that Show Frame Edges was
