Using the Tools Toolbar

Starting on the left side of the screen you'll notice a small toolbar displaying five tools (Figure 1.1). The Type and Note tools are the first two because you'll use these most often for typing and editing text and creating notes. These first two tools are usable in all three view modes (Galley, Story, and Layout).

Figure 1.1. The InCopy Tools.

The bottom three tools can only be used in Layout view. The Position tool is used for positioning and cropping images that are in assigned image frames (see Chapter 6 for more information about working with images in an InCopy document).

The last two tools are the Hand tool and the Zoom tool. Click and drag with the Hand tool to move the document within the viewable area and click with the Zoom tool to zoom into the Layout view. To zoom out hold the Option/Alt key and click with the Zoom tool.

Tip

Double-click the Hand tool to fit the entire spread in the window or double-click the Zoom tool to view the spread at 100%. These shortcuts are the same for InDesign CS2 .

The default position of the Tools toolbar is a single column on the far left edge of the screen, but it can be customized in many ways. For example, if you would rather display the tools across the top of the screen, grab the gripper area at the top of the Tools toolbar and drag it near the top of the screen.

If you're familiar with some of Adobe's other professional graphic design applications such as Photoshop and Illustrator, you might prefer the familiar two-column floating toolbar. If so, grab the toolbar by the gripper area and drag it away from the edge of your screen. Now you can position the floating toolbar anywhere you please .

Using the Other Toolbars

InCopy has two other toolbars that give you instant feedback and control over different aspects of the writing and editing workflow.

The Command Bar

The default location of this handy toolbar is along the top of the screen, beneath the menu commands; it may remind you of the similar toolbar in Word. For users who don't want to use the menu commands or aren't inclined to memorize keyboard shortcuts, this helpful toolbar includes shortcuts to several of the most frequently used commands:

Creates a new InCopy story with default settings.

Invokes an Open dialog box where you can choose a file to open (see Chapter 2).

Saves the current document.

Prints the current document.

Opens a Find/Change dialog for the current window (see Chapter 4).

Opens a Check Spelling dialog (see Chapter 4).

Reveals and hides invisible characters such as spaces, paragraph breaks, and tab characters .

The Track Changes Toolbar

By default, the Track Changes toolbar (Figure 1.2) is parked next to the Command Bar and offers some of the most important InCopy features in an editing workflow. The tools in this toolbar allow you to view, accept, or reject edits. To learn about making text edits and tracking changes in an editorial workflow, see Chapter 5.

Figure 1.2. The Track Changes toolbar allows you to view edits made to a story as well as accept or reject changes.

Accessing Palettes in the Window Menu

Rather than explain all the features of each one now, we'll simply point out that the InCopy palettes are listed alphabetically in the Window menu. The only exception to this is Type & Tables, which lists a submenu of all the palettes related to those features, including Character Styles, Paragraph Styles, and Tabs. We'll give a more complete explanation of specific palettes in the context of the overall workflowto quickly learn more about a particular one, look it up in the index.

Hybrid Palettes/ Toolbars

Before going any farther into managing your palettes and toolbars, we want to introduce you to a slick trick found only in InCopy. A few toolbars work only as toolbars, and some palettes work only as palettes, but the remaining palettes (Change Info, Copyfit Info, Swatches, Character, Character Styles, Paragraph, Paragraph Styles, and Swatches) lead an intriguing double life. They can behave and look just like a typical floating palette, but if you drag the palette tab (the part with the text label) to the top or bottom of your screen, the palette morphs into a horizontal toolbar (Figure 1.3).

Figure 1.3. Many palettes can be converted to toolbars to maximize screen real estate.

Some InCopy users will be familiar with the palettes of Adobe applications, whereas other folks are making the switch from a word-processing application such as Microsoft Word, with its horizontal toolbars. The hybrid palette/toolbars mean that no matter what other software you might be familiar with, InCopy can be customized to behave the way you prefer.

Customizing Toolbars and Palettes

It's pretty cool that you can customize how the InCopy interface works, but it gets more interesting when you discover that most of the toolbars can be customized to show only the features you actually use. Click the palette menu button in any toolbar to see a Customize command plus a few available options particular to that set of tools. Choose Customize and you can enable the options you want to see all the time and disable the ones you don't use (Figure 1.4). This is an easy way to minimize screen clutter and maximize your efficiency as you work in InCopy.

Figure 1.4. Customize toolbars with the options in the palette menu.

Tip

Any options you choose when customizing a toolbar are application-wide settings, not document-specific. This means the settings will stay the same for any document you edit in InCopy until you change these settings again .