Copy style, Quark’s method

[RSoldin]

I’m new to ID, as a lot of people are. Coming from Quark and starting with IDCS, I was trying to find a substitute for the copy style short cut in Quark for IDCS.

That’s the handy one that you set your cursor in a paragraph then hold option-shift and click on another paragraph to copy/set its style attributes to the one that your cursor is in.

I know the eyetool does this, but can it be done with the keyboard and/or clicking? Selecting the eyetool each time is to many steps for such a simple task.

InDesign CS didn’t come with any keyboard reference cards like most software does. At least the suite doesn’t.

Thanks

 

[jimoblak]

I cannot recreate your hotkey trick in Quark 5. Could you be using an extra Xtension to do this?

There is no keyboard reference cards for ID because you define the hotkeys. You can even load a Quark set of hotkeys. See Edit>Keyboard Shortcuts

- - picklefish - -
Why is everyone in this forum responding to me as picklefish?

 

[RSoldin]

Thanks for the reply jimoblak (picklefish).

I should have stated the version, sorry. I never moved to Quark 5, although, I did purchase it, I am very fluent in Quark 4.1.1. I don’t know if the short cut works in Quark 5, I'll start it up and see if it does. The short cut only sets the paragraph style to the text your cursor is set in from the text you click on.

In the meantime, what is the fastest way to copy a paragraph style from one para to another in INCS? Is it selecting the eyedropper first, or is there a short cut that I can’t find in the documentation? My company does book production for major publishers and we get a lot of text files for additions to the main body that are pasted in to the main text flow. Using that short cut made it a one click movement to style the new block of text.

Your explanation of not having a reference card makes sense, but I have read on another board, that one comes with the individual program but Adobe didn’t included any in the suite package. Kinda odd.

Why is everyone in this forum responding to you as picklefish? I don’t know, do you eat a lot of canned sardines?

 

[jimoblak]

There is probably a printable PDF hotkey card somewhere...

Are you using predefined style sheets? If so, you can click on the style names listed in the palette for 'one click movement'. Copying styles from one paragraph to another in the way you describe is not something I am familiar with.

- - picklefish - -
Why is everyone in this forum responding to me as picklefish?

 

[tad1952]

This might be a workaround for you if you don't want to use the eyedropper.

The style palettes in ID are far easier to use than those in Quark. You can simply highlight a word or a couple of letters in the block you want to copy & go to Paragraph Palette/New and name it. A window will appear with a blank for you to assign your own shortcut. Then you can touch the block of copy you want & use your shortcut to assign the style.

I create a new style for just about every variation I use & name them so I know exactly what they are - i.e. body 12/15 indented, body 12/15 no indents, body 2 column, body 5 column, etc.

At any time you can double click on any of the style names in the palette and make revisions on the fly as well as preview it before assigning it - and even undo something if you don't like it.

 

[RSoldin]

tad1952, thanks for the tip, but I don’t want to create a new style, since I work on books, I already have many if not hundreds of styles setup in the file. Adding a new one would just be adding more confusion to my work.

Jimoblak, I tried the shortcut in Quark 5.01 and it works there also. This is how to do it.

Set 2 lines of text in a new document (or any document), make sure that they are separate lines. Create a new paragraph style, making sure that its attributes are different from the normal style, so you can watch the change. Set one of the lines to the new paragraph style. Make sure that the other line is not set to the same style, it should be normal or some other different style.

Now, click to set your text cursor in the unstyled line, then hold down the option-shift keys and click on the styled line you want to get the style from. Walla, it sets that line your text cursor is in to the style of the line that you option-shift clicked on. It can work with numerous lines or paragraphs select. This doesn’t work with character styles.

This is not an extension, it is something that is built into Quark. I have used this for so many years that its going to be a hard habit to change. This also works if both lines are set to different para styles and you want to change one to the other.

By the sounds of it, I am going to either have to create a script to do this or a QuicKey. I just hope one of you guru ID people know a different way.

Thanks