Do you want to be an ACE? I do! And that’s why I’m studying to take the Adobe Certified Expert exam for InDesign.
There is so much to this program that I never knew! I’ve been using it fairly regularly for at least a year and I thought I had a pretty firm grasp of it. There are so many little ways that InDesign can help you out by automating layout elements. Let me share a few I’ve learned this week.
Manage Default Settings for New Documents
So maybe this is pretty simple, but it’s something that I just found out. Do you have document settings that you use regularly? Like maybe for 80% of your projects you set up an 8.5 x 11 sheet with 1” margins and a quarter inch bleed. How can you tell InDesign to make that the default setting? Easy! You just have to know how.
With NO documents open:
- Go to File>Document Setup
- Set the page size
- Click the More Options Button
- Set bleed
- Click OK
You can also set default margins and columns, ruler guides and layout adjustment options from the Layout menu. There are quite a few other options that you can change so they will be set for all new documents—like a default dictionary for spell checker—but the document size, bleed and margins were the big ones for me.
Oh! And you can change the default Basic Paragraph style, too! No more nasty 12 pt Times New Roman! Again, just adjust the settings with NO documents open. You can add new styles, too, but Adobe recommends you don’t do that to avoid multiple instances of the same style in previously created documents.
Working with Sections
Sections are the way to control meta content for your document—by that I mean the information in the headers and footers like page numbers, chapter numbers, section prefix (handy for legal documents and manuals) and the page and chapter numbering styles (1, I, A, i, etc.).
If you don’t want the new sections to restart numbering, just leave the radio button selection on Automatic Page Numbering.
I thought the coolest part of this whole window was the Section Marker field. This is where you can name your sections! Then in the Master Page, create a text box and right click in it, navigate Insert Special Characters>Markers>Section Marker. Now you don’t have to worry about changing your section titles when you add or delete pages! InDesign does it for you!
Another quick tip I learned is that you can double click on the black arrow above a page in the Pages panel (which indicates the start of a new section) to access the Numbering and Section Options dialog.
Autoflow Master Page Text Boxes
I discovered this tip completely by accident.
Create two text frames on the Master Page spread. Click in the outflow box (blue box in the lower right corner-ish) and then click in the other text frame. Now the frames are linked so the text will flow from one to the other.
On your layout page, DON’T override the text frame. Instead, import text using Ctrl/Cmd + D and choose a Word or another text file and click in the text box. Now, (for the COOLEST part yet!) hold down Shift (notice the cursor change) and click in the text frame (that you didn’t override).
WOW!!!
InDesign automatically added the proper number of pages to accommodate all the text from your document AND if you adjust the text boxes on the Master Page, they will adjust in the layout pages too! Now you don’t have to worry about having to adjust text boxes in the layout down the road because they are all still connected to your Master Page!
Learning InDesign—Resources
Along my travels through studying for the ACE InDesign test, I’ve found a few very helpful resources.
Adobe provides a Video Workshop on their site, which hosts a number of Adobe product video tutorials, including some from Lynda.com.
Lynda.com is a great resource and at $25 per month for unlimited access to video tutorials, how can you not sign up?! Most of the InDesign tutorials are recorded by none other than our friends from InDesign Secrets, Anne-Marie Concepción and David Blatner. And Lynda.com kindly allows a sort of trial—you don’t even need to set up an account—in the way of a few beginner videos for each set of tutorials. And trust me, even if you think you know everything there is to know about a topic (even something as simple as InDesign workflow) watch the video for it; I’m positive you’ll pick up at least one new trick. I did!
ACE InDesign Advice
Have any of you taken the ACE InDesign test? How did you study? Are there any exam aids or study guides that you would recommend?
Do you need more help with InDesign? Feel free to leave a comment below, contact me or head over to Lynda.com and sign up for their InDesign Tutorials. It’s only $25/mo for unlimited access! This is a resource I use myself and I highly recommend it. You can get a free 7 day pass to lynda.com, now too! Just follow that link.
Note: This post contains affiliate links. Please use them in an effort to Support Creative Curio. Thanks!
Great article! It reminded me of something I’ve been wanting to do….take the ACE tests for InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop.
When are planning on taking the test? Are you planning on getting certified for anything else?
You can try our InDesign CS3 ACE Exam Aid. Highly recommended, not just by me. Written by two top-class trainers: David Creamer and Zaid Al-Hilali.
Melanie,
I want to take it before the end of the year. It’s one of my improvement goals at work and I want to take the CS3 one before CS4 comes out! I’ve heard that the Photoshop and Illustrator tests are quite difficult because there is SO much to know, especially with the new Photoshop Extended. I’ve seen many print professionals complain about the amount of web-related questions and vice versa for web professionals. If you are planning to take all three tests, why not take the Acrobat one, too, and become an Adobe Certified Print Specialist! Take one more test for Dreamweaver and be a Web specialist too! The down side? To keep up on your certification you have to take a new test (much shorter and a third the cost, plus you can take it online) every time a new version is released. That’s 5 tests to take within three months of the public release!
Examaids,
Yes, I have tried to install the demo of the InDesign CS3 aid several times on both a Windows XP and a Windows Vista machine. I can never get it to work. I even emailed the tech support on your site and never got a response. I don’t want to buy a product I can’t try out first!
Illustrator test – gotta look into that, just for the kicks!
dreamweaver test – thats the biggest scam ever! Learn to “code” instead and you can master any WYSIWYG and text editor.
Sorry Im high on Pinot Noir and Philip Glass at the moment – hiccup!
Esben,
I know the tests don’t prove if you really know design or coding, only the program (yes, InDesign has coding–XML!). But a responsible designer will learn new things and let’s face it, if an employer sees “Adobe Certified Expert” on your resume, that’s going to hold some weight!
I’ve heard that before Lauren
but Im not buying it!
its like getting a “PC driving license” when your capably of compiling your own linux distro.. or should be able to!
Im talking solely about Dreamweaver, which in my simple opinion is a app for people who are terrified of codes. Its for graphic experienced people who have been working in printing all of their lives and the suddenly wakes up a sunday morning saying: I want to make a webpage!
that takes effort, just like everything else! I don’t know how to compare this, but it should be taken seriously and something you have study.
but thats just my opinion..
Esben,
Yeah… you and your opinions!
ooh, cool! I’ve been wanting to for the ACE certificate forever, but have been slack.. i always thought it’d be easiest to start with acrobat, then go indesign, photoshop and illustrator last.. Good luck
Alex Charchar´s last blog post..50 Movie Poster Remakes (M-R)
The exam aids do work on XP, Vista and Mac OS X. They were tested before being released. As for tech support, sorry you didn’t get a response. We moved servers not too long ago and one of the contact addresses had problems. The problem you are experiencing, is it with the installer or the actual application? If the former, I can send you one sans installer to try; if latter, please go here and make sure you have Java Runtime Environment installed: http://www.java.com Click on the Do I Have Java link when you get there.
This place looks like a sad feminine rip-off of the Web Designer Wall.
Alex,
I would think Acrobat would the be easiest one, too, and I bet you’d learn a whole lot about how powerful it is! I love all this stuff I’m learning about InDesign.
Examaids,
Thanks for responding! It is a problem when I try to start the ExamAid program after installing it. On the XP machine, I get an error that it “cannot find main class.” With Vista the error says it’s missing Java. I tried installing Java several times on my Vista machine, but I will check out that “Do I Have Java” section. Maybe I grabbed the wrong download? It wasn’t very clear to me.
Tom,
That is a rude and hurtful thing to say. In the future, if you would like to contribute to the conversation, I ask that you be respectful else I will delete your comments.
It looks like Java Runetime Environment on your XP machine is not up to date and your Vista machine hasn’t got Java installed, or it has been disabled.
JRE is a free install from Java.com. You have to do it manually on a PC but on a Mac it’s installed and updated automatically.
Examaids,
Thanks again for the suggestions. I will let my IS dept. at work know that my JRE isn’t up to date (the XP machine) and I will try to install it again on the Vista machine; I don’t know why it didn’t install the first two times I tried it!
Love these Indesign articles. I use Indesign a lot, and yet these articles serve to refresh my memory, and remind me that I could be working smarter. Thanks.
johno´s last blog post..Sunday Type: lettercult type
Johno,
Thanks! I know what you mean, I know the best ways to do things, but when I’m trying to get a project done quickly I don’t take the time to set things up properly (or figure out how to do it). I almost always regret it later. So what InDesign tips have you gathered along the way?
great tips, by the way I took and pass de ACE exam for photoshop cs2 and what I did was bougth teh exam aid from examaids.com and the questions I answered wrong, I found the topic and took a tutorial, I wrote down on paper al questions and answers, but it aint easy for non english speakers. Now I want to take teh affter effects but it scares me pay for the test and fail and have to take a plane to maxico city and take it.
good luck all of you,
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