Adding Text

No matter where your text originates ‚ in your mind, in e-mail, on the Web, or in a word processor ‚ you can add it to an InDesign publication easily. You can type text directly in InDesign, paste it, drag and drop it, or import it. InDesign works with text inside frames ‚ holders for the copy ‚ that you can create in advance or let InDesign create for you when you begin typing or when you import text.

Typing text

First, you can't do anything with text without the Type tool. Once the Type tool is selected, as shown in Figure 15-1, you can click in an existing block of text, or click and drag to create a new text frame. You can even click in any empty frame with the Type tool to convert it to a text frame.

Figure 15-1: When the Type tool is selected, you can click in a text frame and start typing.

Note ‚  

What you can't do is simply click in your document and begin typing, as you can in PageMaker. InDesign is like other page-layout programs in that the text must be in a frame. Fortunately, you can create that frame just by clicking and dragging with the Type tool.

From this point, start typing to enter text.

Tip ‚  

You can't click in master text frames ‚ text frames that are placed on the page by the master page in use ‚ and simply start typing. To select a master text frame and add text to it, Shift+ z +click or Ctrl+Shift+click it. (For more on master pages, see Chapter 7.)

Pasting text

When text is on the Mac or Windows Clipboard, you can paste it at the location of the cursor or replace highlighted text with it. If no text frame is active, InDesign creates a new rectangular text frame to contain the pasted text.

New Feature ‚  

Text that is cut or copied from InDesign retains its formatting, while text pasted from other programs normally loses its formatting. (Text pasted from other programs always retains its special characters such as curly quotes, em dashes, and accented characters.) In InDesign CS, you can now specify whether pasted text retains its formatting. Go to the General pane in the Preferences dialog box (choose InDesign ‚ Preferences on the Mac or Edit ‚ Preferences in Windows, or press z +K or Ctrl+K) and select the Preserve Text Attributes When Pasting check box.

InDesign uses standard menu commands and keyboard commands for cutting/
copying text to the Clipboard, and for pasting text. On the Mac, press z +X to cut, z +C to copy, and z +V to paste. In Windows, press Ctrl+X to cut, Ctrl+C to copy, and Ctrl+V to paste.

Keep characters to a minimum

If you're new to professional publishing, you have a few things to learn about the difference between typing on a typewriter or into a word processor and entering text for a high-end publication:

• Remember that there's no need to type two spaces after a period or colon . In fact, it will cause awkward spacing and perhaps even text-flow issues.

• Don't enter extra paragraph returns for space between paragraphs and don't enter tabs to indent paragraphs ‚ you'll accomplish both more consistently with paragraph attributes (Type ‚ Paragraph, or Option+ z +T or Ctrl+Alt+T).

• When you need to align text in columns , don't enter extra tabs; place the same amount of tabs between each column, then align the tabs (Type ‚ Tabs, or Shift+ z +T or Ctrl+Shift+T).

To see where you have tabs, paragraph breaks, spaces, and other such invisible characters, use the command Option+ z +I or Ctrl+Alt+I, or choose Type ‚ Show Hidden Characters, as the following figure shows.

 

Dragging and dropping text

If you're the kind of person who likes to juggle many open windows and applications, you can drag highlighted text from other programs ‚ or even text files from the desktop or a folder ‚ into an InDesign document. As with pasted text, text that you drag and drop is inserted at the location of the cursor, replaces highlighted text, or is placed in a new rectangular text frame.

Cross-Reference ‚  

Text files that are dragged in must be in a supported format: Microsoft Word 97/98 or later, Excel 97/98 or later, Rich Text Format (RTF), or text-only. Chapter 14 covers this in detail.

When you drag and drop a text selection, its formatting is lost (that's because InDesign assumes you want it to take on the attributes of the text you're inserting it into). However, when you drag and drop a text file, the process is treated more like a text import: The text retains its formatting and it brings its style sheets with it. Unlike using the Place command (File ‚ Place, or z +D or Ctrl+D) to import text, drag and drop does not give you the option to specify how some of the formatting and styles in the text file are handled.

Importing text

If the text for your InDesign publication was written in a word processor, you can import it, with many styles intact, into a publication if it's in a supported version of Word or in the RTF format. You can also import ASCII text files and Tagged Text files. See Chapter 14 for more details.

When you import text using the Place dialog box, shown in Figure 15-2, it's placed according to your current selection:

• If the cursor is within text in a text frame, the text is inserted at that location.

• If an empty text frame is selected, the text is imported into the frame.

• If no text frames are selected, a loaded-text icon (shown in Figure 15-3) lets you draw a rectangular text frame to contain the text or click in an existing empty frame or text frame.

  
  Figure 15-2: The Place dialog box.

  
  Figure 15-3: The loaded-text icon (left). There are two variants ‚ autoflow (center; hold the Shift key) and semi-autoflow (right; hold the Option or Alt key) ‚ that let text flow to other frames during import.

To place text:

1. Choose File ‚ Place, or press z +D or Ctrl+D.

2. Locate the text file you want to import.

3. If you want to specify how to handle current formatting in the file, check the Show Import Options check box, shown in Figure 15-2, which opens the appropriate Import Options dialog box for the text file's format, as shown in Figure 15-4.

   
   Figure 15-4: The Import Options dialog box lets you select import options; the options will differ based on the type of file selected. Shown here are the options for a Tagged Text file (top) and a Word file (bottom).

   If you prefer memorizing keyboard commands to simply checking boxes, press Shift while you open the file to display the import options.

   Tip ‚  

   If you're importing a text-only file that contains paragraph returns at the end of each line, be sure to check Show Import Options as it will give you the option to remove them.

   New Feature ‚  

   InDesign CS now lets you import word processor and spreadsheet text as unformatted; select Remove Text and Table Formatting or Remove Text Formatting (depending on what kind of file is selected) in the Import Options dialog box.

4. Check Retain Format to maintain paragraph and character attributes in the text and to import style sheets.

   If the text contains style sheets with the same names but different attributes than style sheets already in the InDesign publication, the style sheets in the publication override those in the imported text.

   Cross-Reference ‚  

   See Chapter 20 for more on setting up style sheets, which save formatting so you can apply it to whole paragraphs or selections of text in one easy step.

5. Check Convert Quotes to convert straight quotes (") to curly quotes (" ").

6. Click Open to import the text.

7. If you had not selected a frame before starting the text import, specify where to place the text by clicking and dragging the loaded-text icon to create a rectangular text frame, clicking in an existing frame, or clicking in any empty frame.

   To cancel the text import, just select a different tool.

   Caution ‚  

   If you click a frame that holds a graphic when importing text, the text will replace the graphic.

   Cross-Reference ‚  

   If all the text you import doesn't fit in the selected text frame, see the "Threading text frames" section in Chapter 16 for more information on how to make it flow to other text frames.

   Caution ‚  

   Unlike other layout programs, InDesign does not translate two consecutive hyphens (--) into em dashes ( ‚ ), even if you check the Convert Quotes option. Fortunately, many modern word processors do this, so the chances of having two consecutive hyphens from recently created documents are slim. (In Word, use Tools ‚ AutoCorrect to enable this feature; in Word Perfect, use Tools ‚ QuickCorrect. Chapter 14 covers this in more detail.)

Handling import options

If you check Show Import Options in the Place dialog box, InDesign displays a set of options for handling formatting in the selected text file. These options vary based on the kind of file you are importing:

• Text files: You can choose a character set (ASCII or ANSI; ANSI supports different special symbols than the more common ASCII), the originating platform (which helps ensure paragraph returns are properly recognized, as well as some special symbols), and a language dictionary to associate with the text file, so InDesign will know how to spell-check and hyphenate it. In addition, you can specify how extraneous paragraph returns and spaces are handled, as well as convert keyboard quotes (") to typographic (curly) quotes (" ").

• Tagged Text: Options include converting keyboard quotes (") to typographic (curly) quotes (" "), as well as specifying whether to use style sheets in the tagged text or those in InDesign when style sheets conflict, and whether to preview problem tags.

• Word and RTF: You can import a table of contents and index as text; convert keyboard quotes (") to typographic (curly) quotes (" "); convert page breaks before paragraphs to column or page breaks; remove all text formatting; and convert tables to tabbed text.

• Excel: You can specify whether to import custom views, the worksheet you want to import, and a rectangular range of cells to import (separate the range with a colon, such as A1:C9 to import cells A1 through C9). Formatting options let you determine whether to use Excel's default spreadsheet styles or to specify the cell alignment and number of decimal places in a cell yourself. You can also specify whether cells expand to fit their contents and whether the spreadsheet should be converted to a table in InDesign. You can also convert keyboard quotes (") to typographic (curly) quotes (" ").

 

Exporting text

Unfortunately, you can't export text from InDesign into a word-processor format like Word; your options are RTF, InDesign Tagged Text, and text-only formats. (If you have the InCopy group editing tool covered in Appendix F, you can also export to the InCopy format.) The best option is RTF if you want to send the file to someone using a word processor, and it's Tagged Text if you want to send it to another InDesign user with all InDesign settings retained.

After you click in a text frame with the Type tool, you export text by choosing Edit ‚ Export, which provides a dialog box very much like the Save dialog box. Here, you choose the file format, filename, and file location. If you have selected text in a text frame, only that text will be exported; otherwise , the entire story will be exported.

Note ‚  

You can export only one story at a time. (A story is all text in linked text frames.)