Titles need to break across columns 1

[WestKaz]

I am typesetting a book of business articles. The text is in two columns, but I need the title for each new article to break across both columns, and have the text under the title in two columns. How can I do this without creating a new text frames each time I begin a new article? If the client changes the length of an article, it would mean a lot of resizing the frames.

(I have recently switched to InDesign CS from another program that had the ability to break lines across columns as an option in the "breaks" menu.)

 

[greysweaters]

I'm still an InDesign newbie, but maybe you can use tables to achieve the results you desire? I'm still learning about tables. Sorry I can't be of any more help.

 

[greysweaters]

Under "Type > Insert Break Character" there is an option titled "Column Break". You probably found that already!

 

[nstikker]

This is exactly the problem I have. The insert break character won't do it, it just moves the rest of the text to the next colomn. I haven't tried the table-trick yet, but it seems a bit to much hassle for the problem. The first post is already some time ago. Has anybody found a working solution yet?

 

[WestKaz]

My solution was just to use insert a text frame each time I needed the text to break across columns. It was not very elegant, but I couldn't find simple way to get a headline across both columns any other way. (It is very annoying that MS Word can outperform InDesign this way. I have switched to InDesign from PowerPublisher and am very generally very pleased with InDesign.)

 

[nstikker]

Thanks for your response. I am going to post this question at the user-to-user forum of Adobe. See if anybody got any bright ideas. By the way, just in case there isn't any on-the-menu solution, wouldn't it be possible to put this action (make new textframe, put it in the right spot, cut and paste title from main textframe into new textframe) in a macro?
I read something about scripts in Indesign, but I don't know yet what they can do. As a last resort I could try to write a macro in something like Macro Express, but it would of course be much better if there was some kind of macro language embedded in Indesign (or is there already?).

Anyway, I'll post any findings on this forum as well.

 

[nstikker]

Well, that was helpful! Some Dave Saunders encountered this problem some time ago and wrote a script for it. It's shareware and it seems to work ok. It puts the title in a single-cell table that goes across your columns, whithout creating a new frame. Check it out:

http://pdsassoc.com/index.php?Nav=s...dler&Info=PDSproducts/HeadStraddler/index.php

I hope this works. I'm not that familiar with inserting shortcuts in forums.