Navigating Documents and Pages

Moving from page to page in a long document and scrolling around a large or magnified page are among the most common tasks you'll perform in InDesign. The more time you spend displaying the page or page area you want to work on, the less time you have to do the work you need to do. Like most trips, the less time you spend between destinations, the better.

For navigating through the pages of a document, the Pages pane (Window ‚ Pages or F12) offers the fastest ride. For navigating around in a page, you may want to switch to the Navigator pane (Window ‚ Navigator).

Navigating with the Pages pane

When the Pages pane is displayed, you can use it to quickly move from page to page in a multipage document and to switch between displaying master pages and document pages. To display a particular document page, double-click its icon. The selected page is centered in the document window. To display a master spread, double-click its icon in the lower half of the pane.

Tip ‚  

The Fit Page in Window command (View ‚ Fit Page in Window, or z +0 or Ctrl+0) and Fit Spread in Window command (View ‚ Fit Page in Window, or Option+ z +0 or Ctrl+Alt+0) let you enlarge or reduce the display magnification to fit the selected page or spread in the document window. (Note that the shortcuts use the numeral , not the letter O .)

Using the Navigator pane

Although it's possible to use the Navigator pane (Window ‚ Navigator) to move from page to page in a long document, the Pages pane is better for this task. The Navigator pane is more useful for scrolling within a page, particularly for doing detail work on a page that's displayed at a high magnification. If you're an Illustrator, PageMaker, or Photoshop user , you may already be familiar with the Navigator pane, which works the same in all three applications.

To display the Navigator pane, choose Window ‚ Navigator. Figure 5-7 shows the Navigator pane and its palette menu.

Figure 5-7: The Navigator pane and its palette menu.

Changing view magnification

You can use the Navigator pane to zoom in or zoom out on the current spread. You have several options for zooming in and out:

• Click the handle on the zoom and drag left to zoom out, right to zoom in.

• Click the zoom-out icon to the left of the zoom slider to zoom out; click the zoom-in icon to the right of the zoom slider to zoom in.

• Enter a view percentage in the field at the bottom right of the Navigator pane. Enter a smaller value to zoom out; enter a larger value to zoom in. Enter 100% to display the page at actual size .

  Tip ‚  

  You can also use the Zoom tool or its keyboard shortcuts to zoom in or out ( z +spacebar or Ctrl+spacebar to zoom in, Option+ z +spacebar or Ctrl+Alt+spacebar to zoom out).

Scrolling with the Navigator pane

The rectangle displayed in the Navigator pane (on the actual screen it should show up red) indicates the area that's currently displayed in the document window. When you change the display magnification, the rectangle changes size (it gets larger as you zoom out and smaller as you zoom in). You can display a different area in the currently displayed spread by dragging the rectangle or by clicking outside it. If you click outside it, the point where you click is centered in the document window.

Other options in the Navigator pane

If red isn't your favorite color, you can change the color of the rectangle displayed in the Navigator pane by choosing Palette Options from its palette menu and then choosing a different color from the Color pop-up menu in the Palette Options dialog box.

If you choose Show All Spreads from the Navigator pane's palette menu, all the document's spreads are displayed in the pane. The more spreads you have, the smaller they're displayed and the smaller the rectangle becomes that indicates the area that's displayed in the document window. By dragging the rectangle from page to page you can navigate to a particular area on a page while remaining at the current display percentage. This can be a handy way of navigating, but if you're working on a document that has many pages, the page icons and rectangle can become too small to work with easily. Figure 5-8 shows the Navigator pane with the View All Spreads option selected.

Figure 5-8: The Navigator pane with View All Spreads selected.

Tip ‚  

You can also use the scroll bars at the right and bottom of the document window to move to different areas of a page or to a different page in a document or the keyboard shortcut (hold down the spacebar, then click and drag the hand pointer; the Type tool cannot be selected for this to work).