Hi there. My name is Dan and this is a super fantastic Adobe InDesign Cheat Sheet.
Now there is a PDF version of this that you can go to bringyourownlaptop.com.
Go to the Resources section and there's a printed version that you can print off,
stick next to your desk,
learn all the shortcuts, be more awesome.
There are also lots of other courses there that you might sign up for,
but let's get into the Cheat Sheet.
The first tip is converting imperial to metric or vice versa.
At the moment it's set to inches,
but say I need something that needs to be 30 centimeters.
I can click out and it converts it to inches for me.
Same works when you are set to say millimeters,
okay, and we need something to be four inches.
Click out and it does the conversion for you.
Cool. Now, this works in the New Document box,
like we've got opened that also works when I hit Close.
Click on this box here,
the height set to one inch, but say I needed to be two centimeters,
it will do the conversion to 0.7 inches for me automatically,
any box anywhere that you can type in.
You can also do some other cool things with these boxes.
Say the width needs to be half of this.
So I just typed in /2 for divided by two and it converts it to half.
All sorts of math can be done.
Say I need to times it by 3,
use little asterisks for three.
Click anywhere else in these boxes and it's now three times as long.
You can add, subtract, divide, and multiply.
The next tip is the command click or control click if you're on a PC.
So I need to get to this logo here but there's text boxes in the way.
I can move this text box and get to this guy.
But what I can do in easier way is I can hold down the command key on my keyboard,
if I'm on a Mac or if you're on a PC, it's control.
So hold it down using my black arrow.
I'm going to click once, I get the type,
click again, and I get the layer underneath.
I can keep going, click again and I get that big washed out graphic,
click again, and I get the gradient in the background.
It's a way to select things without having to unpick them and move them all around.
This next shortcut is probably the one I use the most.
I'm going to select this text and there's a couple I'm going to throw at you,
hold down command and shift on a Mac or Control Shift on a PC,
and then tap the Full stop key or the Period key,
and it'll make the font bigger.
Hit the Comma. Holding those same keys,
makes a smaller, bigger, smaller, really handy.
Another thing you can do is you can play around with the tracking.
All you need to do with all this tick selected,
hold down the Alt key on a PC or Option key on
the Mac and just use your left and your right arrows.
Just a little keypad arrows there,
the up and the down does the leading,
handy, kind of ruin that though.
The next tip is,
I've got this box in the middle,
I've got it using text wrap,
so it's pushing the text around it away,
which this we can push it around.
The problem is when I try and put other text over the top of it,
that's what I want to go here.
It won't work, because that same text wrap is pushing this text away.
Now, we could right click this and go to
Text Frame Options and say Ignore Text Wrap and that will work for this one box,
but then every single time you have any this sort of instance,
you have to go and tick that box again.
What if there was a way to change it forever? There is.
All we need to do is go to,
if you're on a Mac it's under InDesign,
Preferences, Composition, if you're on a PC,
go to Edit, and Preferences are down here,
then go to Composition.
I'm going to go here composition and here's the magical button here,
text wrap only affects the text underneath it.
Which means this guy,
just happens to be on top,
so he's not going to be affected by it.
Just the stuff underneath. Onto the next step.
Every time you draw a new type box, scrubbed type box,
draw it out, and it's Minion Pro and 12 point,
which I never use.
So I go and change it and also my swatches panel has boring old fonts that I never use.
I wish there was a way to change the defaults forever. There is.
All you need to do is have nothing open in InDesign.
Hit, Presto and we need to change it from start at the top here to any of these,
we're going to use the same tools,
then I'm going to grab my title and if I change Minion Pro now to let's say Arial Black,
and I'm going to put 12 point and I pick the leading that I
use and I add any swatches to my swatches panel.
They will be there for ever,
watch New Document, drawing,
create, type to a drop box,
start typing Arial Black.
Were going backwards from Minion Pro but you get the idea.
Make sure everything is closed,
so just do essentials,
and you can change anything.
Probably the most important to change, start,
essentials, type tool, switch to paragraph and it's this guy here,
hyphenate, he's on by default.
Nobody likes you on, turn them off,
with your jaw type box it will not be hyphenated.
You're welcome. The next one is for Mac users only, sorry PC.
Let's say that I want to highlight this and I don't want to make
a title case and you know it's any assembly and you will eventually find it,
but look, click on Help and just type in title case.
There we go, down there we hit Return and it's done it for us.
You can see it even points to with a nice big blue arrow right there.
You can just click on this though it's easier.
Let's say that you've turned off smart guide at some stage,
you want to turn them back on, but you are like,
we were there again, type in smart,
see down there, click it once,
and I've turned back on.
Remember, big blue arrow to help you point and figure out where they are.
Then go back. Next tip is jumping pages and it's Command J or Control J.
This is one of the documents we make in our InDesign course.
But it's quite a long document.
We're here, we need to get to page Command J, 5, Enter.
Then back down to page 30,
Command J or Control J on a PC,
let's type 30, hit Enter.
Seems long, but it's one of those things that I use
quite a bit from jumping back from page to page easily.
Another cool feature you can do is say you're trying to see two pages at once,
but we've only got one screen.
So what we can do,
let's say we're dealing with a contents page,
but we also want to be looking at different pages,
just to make sure maybe the headings are matching up.
This little insignificant little button down in the bottom here splits the layout.
It's weird. You end up two versions of the exact same thing.
So over on this side, I'm going to zoom in.
I can see my contents page but on this side though,
I can scroll through my document.
Might be good if you're working on maybe the front cover and back cover together.
But now I can kind of work through my document,
find all my headings and start doing some work over here.
Makes it better if you've got a bigger screen,
I'm looking a little laptop,
so it's not as good.
Another thing you can do is say on this side here you can look
at the big version of the document, say the page,
the big overall arching thing over here,
I'm going to jump to page 1,
I'm going to work in in really fine detail,
but you can see on this side here, it's adjusting.
I can use it kind of two ways,
to turn it off, click that same little button.
The next one is playing around with spreads.
In case, I've got two pages side by side,
we probably know Command 0 on my keyboard or Control 0 on a PC,
will fit the page to our view.
But if you hold down Command and Option and hit 0,
or Control and Option on a PC,
it will fit the spread. It's really handy.
Down here, Command Option 0,
get the spread nicely in the middle.
Now, the next tip is a follow on.
If I use my page down key.
Paging down for some unknown reason, InDesign,
it does go down,
but it goes down in a little bit more.
It's hard to get this thing to work.
What you need to do before you click Page Down is hold
down the option key on a Mac or Alt key on a PC,
do the exact same thing,
but you can see the spread stay right in the middle.
So much handy of zooming through the document.
Now, with side note, if you're in a MacBook Pro like me
and you don't have the page down key because
there's just no room on the keyboard or any other sort
of laptop that doesn't have the page down key,
its function, the key is in the bottom left of your keyboard,
then hold down Option and then use your Up and Down arrows.
They become page up,
page down. Rock on.
Next tip. Hope this one's not too obscure,
I use it a lots.
All of these documents that are open, there's three tabs.
They're all not saved.
I can tell they're not saved because that little asterisks next to them,
but I'm ready to go.
I just need to save them all and close them all.
The shortcut is pretty much all the keys and S. I'm going to max of its Command,
Option Shift S, saves them all and Command Option Shift W, closes them all.
If you're on a PC, it's Control Alt Shift S to save,
and then all those again with W to close them all.
Sometimes I wonder how I learned these shortcuts,
and is it really a shortcut when you've got to remember all those keys?
Anyway, I hope somebody finds that one helpful.
This shortcut has a few different features to it.
I'm going to grab the rectangle tool,
and I want to draw this out,
but by default it's giving me a line on the outside and no fill.
So I want to toggle between my fill and my stroke,
and this can be really fiddly because it's quite small,
which we use this teeny tiny one over there.
But if you just tap the X key on your keyboard, tap, tap.
You can you see it brings the fill to
the front and then the stroke to the front and the fill to the front.
I can go like this without having,
I can say I want to fill it with my red and then I'm going to
tap X and then input a none stroke.
I don't have to go up and try and click it and bring it to the front.
If you just got it the wrong way round and you draw something, you are like,
oh man, I wish it was just green fill and no stroke.
You can hold Shift X and it just switches those two around,
just like this little arrow here.
So X and shift X, eyes in loads,
especially in Photoshop and Illustrator,
the same shortcuts go across to those.
Another shortcut that lots of people use that I don't,
with that selected, black are selected,
you've got your comma,
your period, and your forward slash.
If I type in period,
and it's a gradient, if I type in comma,
it puts in a fill, and if I put in the forward slash,
it removes the fill.
I click on this, forward slash, the fill is gone,
which I can see is useful, period though,
adding gradient, nobody likes you black to white gradient.
That's a bit harsh. Next tip.
You need to start a new job for a new client or
just a new job for an existing client and you're about to start, create a new folder.
When you remember the cool tip that Dan said.
What I've got is I've got in my documents,
this folder here, it's called NewJob.
Inside NewJob, has got all the folders that I need to get a project going.
There's nothing in them,
they're just empty, ready to go.
All I can do is back here,
I can copy NewJob,
copy, paste, and I'm going to work on new client called Green at Heart.
I've got the structure ready to go,
I put all my InDesign files in the working,
I put any copy that I get from the client into copy folder.
Files is generally images.
Reference material might be the old job or PDFs that the client had.
Sent to Client is PDF sent to them to proof.
Sent to Supplier is stuff that I've sent off to the printer,
Site Files I use when I'm doing web work.
You can totally adjust this to what you need.
One of the little things I do though, is in files.
In working, there's a Zold folder.
It's just old work with a Z at the front,
so it's at the bottom of the folder structure,
and I just use that for,
let's say I'm doing concepts for a client and I got A, B,
and C versions in my working and the client picks version B,
I check A and C in here,
just to hide them away,
I haven't deleted them, they're just hiding in Zold, so I know that.
When I come back to this job in two years,
I know which files that I'm going to be using.
The last tip and it's the best one.
This is the tip on shortcut that I use the most, is called quick apply.
There's a couple of instances where you'd use it.
Let's say this heading down here.
I know I want it to be my sub heading that I've set up a paragraph style for,
but instead of having to go find windows,
paragraph styles, and then highlight it,
I can just select it and go Command,
Enter on my keyboard, if you're on a PC,
it's Control Enter, and it brings up this thing called quick apply.
What I do is I just type in sub,
I'm just typing in the name of the paragraph style that I created,
and you see you just hit Enter,
becomes really good when we have to put it in lots of times.
Command Enter, and because it's already got there, Enter.
There's another one, click another one there.
You can get quicker command Enter,
and I can start banging in my paragraph style super quick.
I can see that this thing here is a bit messed up in terms of the paragraph styles.
I'm going to hit Command Enter and type in body,
and you can see that my body copy style,
hit Return, but also I might do is make all these uppercase,
so I'm going to highlight this,
Command Enter and just type upper.
You can see it's gone straight to uppercase, hit Return.
Do the same thing for this one and because it's already preloaded,
I can start putting these things in super quick.
We love you, quick apply. That's it for the tips.
Now, I'll pass you over to the real version of me,
hidden shoulders and all.
Wow, wasn't that a really good Cheat Sheet?
If you like that, there's lots more at bringyourownlaptop.com,
printed versions of that Cheat Sheet plus lots of
other Cheat Sheets for lots of other Adobe and Microsoft products.
I'm waving my hands around.
That means you've got to go to bringyourownlaptop.com. It's all by the hands.