Loading and Importing Styles


You can transfer or load text styles from one document into another.

To transfer text styles into an InDesign document:

1.

Choose one of the following from the Paragraph Styles or Character Styles palette menu:

  • Load Character Styles transfers the character styles.

  • Load Paragraph Styles transfers the paragraph styles.

  • Load All Styles transfers both character and paragraph styles.

2.

Navigate to find the document with the text styles you want to import.

3.

Click Open. The text styles are added to the current document.

Tip

Text style names are case-sensitive. Therefore, a paragraph style name of Body Text will be added as a separate style to a document that already has a paragraph style named body text .

Style names are case sensitive, so two styles can have the same name but different character cases.

How Many Styles?

I was taught to create a unique style for each type of element in my document. For instance, I might have a paragraph that I use in these sidebars that looks identical to the paragraph I use in the regular body text.

Some people might be tempted to define only one style and apply it to both paragraphs. That's not how I work. Instead, I have a unique paragraph style for each type of element.

There are two reasons for this. The first reason is that if I ever decide to change the appearance of one type of paragraph, I have that flexibility. The other reason comes from using styles as the tags that give my document structure.

With this type of structure applied to the text, I can export the text and reuse it in an XML workflow. While XML is way beyond the scope of this book, the concept of tagging each type of element with its own style is a good practice to learn.


When you load styles from one document to another, there may be times when the styles coming into the document have the same name, but different definitions. This is called a style conflict. When this happens you need to resolve the conflict between the styles.

To resolve style conflicts:

1.

Choose one of the Load Styles commands described above. If there are conflicts, the Load Styles dialog box displays the incoming styles that have the same name as the existing styles .

The Load Styles dialog box allows you to choose how style conflicts should be resolved.

2.

Check the styles that you want to load into the document, and resolve the conflict .

A checkmark next to the style name indicates the incoming style definition should be used. No checkmark indicates the existing style definition should be used.

or

Uncheck the styles that you don't want to load into the document.

Tip

Use the Check All or the Uncheck All button to quickly make choices in a long list of styles.

3.

For all the checked styles choose one of the following from the Conflict With Existing Style menu .

Use the Conflict With Existing Style menu to resolve a style conflict.

  • Auto-Rename imports the style with a suffix to differentiate it from the existing style.

  • Use Incoming Style Definition changes the existing style to match the imported style definition.

When you place text from word processing programs such as Microsoft Word into InDesign, the text styles from the imported text are added to the document.

To import styles in Microsoft Word text:

1.

Choose File > Place and navigate to find the Word file you want to import.

2.

Check Show Import Options and click Open. This opens the Microsoft Word Import Options dialog box .

The Microsoft Word Import Options dialog box allows you to control how styles are imported from Word files.

3.

Check Preserve Styles and Formatting from Text and Tables.

4.

Check Import Styles Automatically.

or

Check Customize Style Import.

If you chose to import the styles automatically, you can choose how style conflicts are resolved.

To resolve style conflicts automatically:

1.

To resolve paragraph style conflicts, choose one of the following from the Paragraph Style Conflicts menu .

Use the Paragraph Style Conflicts or Character Style Conflict menu to resolve a style conflict.

  • Choose Use InDesign Style Definition to have the InDesign style override the incoming style.

  • Choose Redefine InDesign Style to have the incoming style override the InDesign style.

  • Choose Auto Rename to add the incoming style to the list of styles in the InDesign style palette.

2.

To resolve character style conflicts choose from the Character Style Conflicts menu.

Tip

A disk icon indicates that the style definition came from the imported text .

The disk icon indicates that the style definition came from an imported text file.

Tip

The disk icon disappears if you modify the imported style.

What if you have a style name in Word that is totally different from the name of the style in the InDesign document? You need a way to tell InDesign which existing style to apply to the Word text. The custom style mapping controls let you change an incoming style to a specific existing style.

To map one style to another:

1.

In the Microsoft Word Import Options dialog box, check Customize Style Import . This makes the Style Mapping button available.

Choose Customize Style Import to click the Style Mapping button.

2.

Click the Style Mapping button. This opens the Style Mapping dialog box .

The Style Mapping dialog box lets you choose how each Microsoft Word style should be applied.

3.

Under the InDesign Style column, choose one of the styles from the pop-up menu for each of the incoming Word styles .

The style choices list lets you map one style to another. Here the Word style answer has been mapped to the InDesign style body.

4.

Click OK to close the Style Mapping dialog box.

Tip

Only paragraph styles are shown in the pop-up menu for incoming Word paragraph styles. Similarly, only character styles are shown in the pop-up menu for incoming Word character styles.

5.

Click OK to close the Style Mapping dialog box.

6.

Click OK in the Microsoft Word Import Options dialog box to import the text.



InDesign CS2 for Macintosh and Windows(c) Visual QuickStart Guide
InDesign CS4 for Macintosh and Windows: Visual QuickStart Guide
ISBN: 0321573579
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 309
Authors: Sandee Cohen

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