
If the designer’s not available or for whatever reason, can’t make the requested change, all the InCopy user can do is to apply the desired formatting manually, from commands in the Paragraph or Character panels.

INCOPY TUTORIAL UPDATE
Then the editor can choose Update Design from the File menu, and the new style appears in their panel. The designer adds the new style to the InDesign layout and saves the document. If an editor needs a new text style (“Caption-small”), or wants to modify an existing one, they have to contact the designer and request it. When an InCopy user opens a layout or assignment and checks out a story, virtually all of the Styles commands (from their panel menus) are grayed out and inaccessible. In fact, even if they wanted to, they couldn’t. They’re not mucking around in there to modify the styles, delete them, or create new ones. You see, in most InCopy/InDesign workflows, editors only open InCopy’s Paragraph Styles or Character Styles panels to apply an existing style that came with the layout - ones like Body Text, Caption, AHead - to some text in a story they checked out. (Of course if you’re not one of those hundred, feel free to skip to the next story.) At least that’s what their managing editors have told me.įollowing the maxim that if one client sends you a question, there are a hundred others who have the same question but didn’t have time to write, I thought I’d spell it all out for you here.

It was a surprise to me, since I thought editors didn’t want to have to bother with formatting text, only writing it and correcting it. Recently I’ve received a number of e-mails from InCopy users with questions about creating paragraph and character styles (such as, “Why can’t I” and “How do I”).
