Galley and Story View are Not Available
Lately, the InCopy forums at Adobe.com have been peppered with posts from different users quoting the same Alert dialog box, and asking why they’re seeing it.
The Alert box they’re referring to is this one:
How Many Letters in a Word?
A production manager at a book publisher e-mailed me this question a couple weeks ago:
How long of a word did Adobe use to determine the number of words in selected text frames?
Here’s a straightforward answer for you: They didn’t. Each word, regardless of length, is counted as one word. (You can change this in InCopy, but not in InDesign—more on that below). And in case you were wondering, hyphenated words are counted as one word, but em- and en-dashes are properly treated as white space separating words.
InCopy’s Hidden Dictionaries
InCopy’s hyphenation and spell-checking routines are automatically set to the default language on your computer, such as US-English on most InCopy installs in the USA. Therefore, when you run a spell-check (or you turn on Dynamic Spelling from the Edit > Spelling flyout menu, as I’ve done here), foreign words and phrases will likely be flagged as misspelled, since they’re not in the default language dictionary.
Here, in the little bit of Spanish text on the second line, InCopy thinks both “quiares” and “ir” are misspelled.
Add Any Diacritic Easily
Last month I was in New Mexico, teaching the InCopy/InDesign workflow to about 30 newspaper editors and designers, all on PCs. They were thrilled with the Glyphs panel (Text > Glyphs) because it’s such a pain in Windows to enter special characters, especially funky letter/diacritic combinations.
However, some of the letter/diacritic pairs they needed to occasionally insert in their stories weren’t available in their body typeface. I showed them how they could enter the letter first, then the diacritic alone, then kern them in tightly so the cedilla or caron or macron was centered over/under the letter. They appreciated the workaround but it wasn’t ideal.
When I returned home I did some investigating, and found the perfect free script for them. “Compose.jsx” is a biplatform Javascript that works in both InDesign and InCopy. Developer Peter Kahrel created a clever little interface that allows the user to enter easily-remembered mnemonics for any letter/diacritic combination. If the glyph exists in the font, the script inserts it automatically (no need to hunt for it in the Glyphs panel). If it doesn’t exist, the script automatically does the kerning workaround, perfectly. It’s phenomenal!
I sent my client a link to the script, and wrote about the script itself (with screen shots) on my other blog, InDesignSecrets.com.
Rather than reprise the whole article, let me just urge you to read it for yourself. A link to download the InDesign or InCopy version of the script appears at the end of the story:
Easy Diacritics and Other Tough Glyphs
Working With Layout Templates
Is there some sort of efficiency virus going around? Over the past few weeks I’ve received a slew of phone calls and e-mails from IC/ID users of every stripe asking for help with the same thing: setting up template-based InCopy/InDesign workflows.
Here’s an example, from an art director who e-mailed me last month:
“I want to make several templates of pages, with, e.g. 3 news and 2 photos, 4 news and 1 photo, 6 news, and so on; so the editors can choose the template they need, edit it and send it to me telling me that this should be page number 13 (for example).”
So we’re not talking about InCopy templates — .inct files — which allow editors to “write ahead” one story at a time. Users want the whole shebang. They want to give the editors layout templates, with placeholder frames for the all the elements (stories, .incx files) in an article.
The thinking is that an editor could open this layout template, save it with a new name, fill in the empty frames with new copy, and turn it over to the designer, who would copy over the finished pages (or place the.incx files of the individual stories) to the InDesign file when they get to it. InCopy users could open that same template over and over for subsequent uses, each time filling it in with new copy for different pages or issues of the publication.
That would be great, but there are some fundamental limitations in InCopy that prevent this from working as most people hope. Even the third-party publishing systems that run on top of InCopy and InDesign need to use proprietary file formats to achieve the same goal.
Let’s get the fundamentals out of the way so we can figure out a workaround.
InCopy and Templates
Did you ever wonder why InCopy’s Save command under the File menu says “Save Content” instead of the usual “Save”? It’s because InCopy can only save InCopy stories — .incx files — that are contained in a layout’s frames.
When you’re working with InCopy in a layout or assignment and have made edits to a story you’ve checked out, it may “feel” like you’re editing the layout or assignment, but you’re not. You’ve actually editing the content of the external .incx file that is linked to the active frame, the one you’re editing. Look in your Links panel (Window > Links) and you’ll see the name of the .incx file you’re actually working on is highlighted.
The program can’t make a dent in an .indd (layout) or .inca (assignment) file itself. As far as it’s concerned, the layout or assignment is just a portal” to the linked story files — it allows you to edit .incx files through the .indd or .inca window.
We’re clear on that now, yes? Let’s return to the issue at hand: Can we create a layout template for InCopy users?
Since InDesign templates (.indt files) open as untitled InDesign (.indd) documents that need to be saved, they’re not in InCopy’s repertoire, and in fact are greyed out (unavailable) in InCopy’s File > Open dialog box. That’s strike one for the InCopy layout template idea. And there is no way for an InDesign user to create a template of an assignment file; the file format simply doesn’t exist — strike two. Strike three is the fact that InDesign cannot import native InCopy template files (.inct); so you can’t create a layout or an assignment with template placeholder stories. Argh!
The game is not over, however. For example, InCopy templates (.inct files) may work just fine for at least some of your “pre-layout” content needs. Just create a new standalone InCopy document (File > New), set it up for a particular type of story, and choose InCopy Template (.inct) as the format in the File > Save As dialog box.
Opening an InCopy template file (.inct) in InCopy creates an copy of it as an untitled .incx file. Now, when you choose File > Save Content, InCopy actually saves the entire document as an external .incx file. You can name it and save it where ever you like. When they’re ready for it, designers place the .incx file into a layout just as though it was (were? help me out here, editors) a Word document.
While you can’t save page layout geometry in an .inct file, you can include boilerplate text, and set a default column width that matches the column width into which the story will ultimately be placed. You can even choose a target word count or column inch count for preliminary copyfitting. Most importantly, the InCopy template can include all the text and table styles the writer might want to use. With the template document open, choose Load Styles from any Styles panel menu and select an InDesign or InCopy file that has the styles you want to import. When files created from that template are placed into an InDesign layout, styles are retained.
Consider Layout Shells
Handy as they are, standalone InCopy templates are nonetheless quite limiting — you can’t even specify the number of columns the lone text frame should have. When editors need an honest-to-goodness layout template, then the designers have to create layout shells for them.
A layout shell is what I call an InDesign (.indd) layout file created just for editorial layout template purposes, not for publication. It’s a small file with placeholder text frames linked to one or more external .incx files, which start out devoid of content. A magazine article layout shell might contain empty InCopy frames for the title, the captions, the body copy, the pull quotes, and the sidebar; arranged in a generic fashion for that magazine but equipped with the correct column widths for each element and maybe a stand-in image around which the body copy wraps. A newspaper reporter’s shell might be just one page long but contain a frame for the headline and a 6-column body text frame underneath, pre-set to use the right paragraph styles.
A writer or editor opens the shell layout — the .indd file — in InCopy and checks out the stories to write copy from scratch, or to place text from Word files. It doesn’t matter if the actual publication is ready for their stories or not. After the InCopy user has checked in the stories and closed the shell file, the designer places those now-full .incx files into the actual layout, whenever it’s ready to be produced, and they should get a close fit.
Further editorial work on the same stories is done in the usual collaborative workflow fashion, with the editors opening up the live layout or assignments created from it. The “shell” layout left behind can be deleted at any time. It’s the stories, the .incx files, that matter.
Shell Creation and Management
To create the shell layouts, the designer creates an InDesign document for each page type (or article type, or section type) he wants to make a layout shell for, using empty placeholder frames for text or images the editors will fill in later. These should be “normal” InDesign frames, not yet exported to InCopy format. He can include other artwork or text, such as folios and rules, that aren’t necessarily editable. For easy re-use, he saves the file as an InDesign template (.indt) and closes the file.
Then he turns the template into an InCopy layout shell by re-opening it in InDesign (which creates an untitled copy of the file), saving it as a layout file with some sort of generic name in its own folder on the server. Finally, he exports the placeholder frames to InCopy format as usual: In CS3 you can just drag and drop the frames onto the Unassigned Content entry in the Assignments panel, otherwise choose one of the Edit > InCopy > Export commands.
If he needs 10 copies of a basic one-page shell, enough to tide a busy editor over for awhile, the designer will have to do this 10 times; opening the template in InDesign, saving as into a new folder, and re-exporting the frames to InCopy each time. Or he can .zip the folder of the first completed shell (layout with linked .incx files), duplicate the .zip file a bunch of times, then unzip (expand) each one on the server. There are other solutions for duplicating a layout with linked InCopy files, which I covered in this post a couple months ago.
I know it’s tempting, but don’t create an InDesign template with its frames already exported to InCopy in order to save a bunch of steps. That will not work.You’ll find that as you open the template in InDesign and Save As over and over, you create multiple InDesign docs linked to the same exact stories. It would be the same as creating a template with a placed image. Every time you save a copy of the template as an .indd file, the .indd files are linked to the same external image file.
Since you’re exporting frames to .incx format anew each time you create a layout shell, you’re going to end up with a lot of .incx files. If your one-page template had three stories, and you make ten shell layouts, you’ll end up with 30 .incx files; each folder containing one .indd file and its three linked .incx files. Hey, it was going to end up as 30 .incx files at some point anyway, right? Might as well generate them now.
What about naming these files? Since every company and workflow is different, I don’t have any specific advice, other than recommending you come up with a plan — you have to be able to tell which shells the editors have “completed,” at least. Perhaps the designers, as they create them, could name the shell layous and exported .incx files for the publications they will belong to, and as they complete them, the editors could move the entire shell folder into a special “ready for layout” location on the server. Or, if you need the shells to be more generically named (article1.indd, article2.indd), the InCopy users could manually rename the .indd file in Windows Explorer or the Finder before they open them (June08Acmefeature.indd, July08BehindTheScenes.indd).
Upon completion, having the editors rename the linked story files themselves (from story1.incx and story2.incx to pg13-head.incx and pg13-body.incx, and so on) and moving them to a “Ready for Layout” folder in the Finder or Explorer is also an option, if you don’t care that doing so breaks the links in the shell file. Again, you might not care because after placing the stories into the live layout, no one will ever open that shell file again.
Assignment Shells?
I’m assuming everyone knows that InCopy can open InDesign layout (.indd) files just as easily as Assignment (.inca) files, since I’ve said it a bazillion times in InCopyFlow. The shell files I’ve been talking about are small ones meant for a single editorial user, thus I don’t see a need to go the extra step of creating an assignment file from it. Just make shell .indd files with linked stories, and have the editors open the .indd files, checking out the stories they contain to edit them, as usual.
The only reason to create a shell assignment would be if an InCopy user needed to open a layout template remotely, off-network. The remote workflow feature in CS3 requires that you start with an Assignment (.inca) file. So, follow all the steps I’ve outlined above, but instead of dragging the shell’s frames to the Unassigned Content entry, the designer should drag and drop them onto the New Assignment icon at the bottom of the Assignments panel. This both creates the Assignment file and exports the frames to InCopy format in one step, Then select the Assignment name in the Assignments panel and choose one of the Package for Remote commands from the panel menu.
If you need to create 10 .incp (InCopy assignment package) shells of the same layout, follow the same instructions as above: Create the InDesign template with normal placeholder frames. Then open the template in InDesign, save it with a generic name in its own folder, and only then create your assignment and package it. Rinse and repeat another nine times, each time varying the name of the assignment slightly.
I wouldn’t attempt any of the “duplicate the shell” methods, as assignment packages are more tricky — they’re internally linked to the layout file that created them, and so opening the .indp (InDesign assignment package) files the editors return could result in stories overwriting themselves.
My InCopy CS3 Workflow White Paper
Last fall, one of my favorite clients — Adobe Systems themselves, woo-hoo! — hired me to write up their official InCopy CS3 Workflow white paper. You’re probably familiar with an earlier version (like CS or CS2) of this white paper. It’s the PDF document prospective users download from the main InCopy product page on the Adobe.com web site to get an idea of how the workflow works.
Look for the link on the InCopy product page, or cut to the chase and download the PDF here (5MB).
On the InCopy product page, note that the official title of the PDF is “The Collaborative Editorial Workflow using Adobe InCopy CS3 and InDesign CS3.” They were paying me by the word so I was as verbose as possible … heh. I’m kidding, Adobe, just kidding!
Actually our aim was to reduce the jargon and verbosity, and make the workflow as clear as possible for users. Of course, it’s just an overview, so I had to continually cut, cut, and cut some more so as not to overwhelm the newbies. 
But I am quite happy with the end result. There are many more screen shots of actual projects (from a “real” publication, not one created for Adobe demos), new information on using layout-based, remote, and XML workflows, and (with a tip of the hat to LensWork magazine, discussed in an earlier issue of InCopyFlow) a neat little sidebar about using InCopy in photo editing departments.
Paragraph Indents in Story/Galley
You can identify paragraph starts and ends in Galley/Story view by turning on Hidden Characters so you can see the non-printing characters like paragraph symbols, tab chevrons and spacebar dots within the text. Any line ending with a paragraph symbol is the end of that paragraph. To turn on Hidden Characters, click the pilcrow — the paragraph symbol — in the Command toolbar or choose Show Hidden Characters from the Type menu.
But, since the hidden characters are always the same color as the text (with a slightly lighter shade), long stories sometimes appear as huge blobs of undifferentiated text. Having more control over how much paragraph formatting Story/Galley can show is in my top five feature requests for the next version of InCopy.
Take paragraph indents, for example. I think it’d be easier to identify paragraphs in a long article in Galley/Story if the first line of every paragraph had the same indent as they have in Layout view. (Or if they don’t have a first-line indent, then Galley/Story would show the space above/below the paragraph.)
In the meantime, though, there’s a little-known feature in CS2 and CS3 that helps to visually indent the first line of every paragraph in Galley/Story. It doesn’t affect formatting — the lines aren’t actually indented in Layout view — it’s just for visual navigation.
Go to the View menu and choose Show Paragraph Break Marks. Nothing changes in Layout view, but in Galley/Story, you’ll see a new special character indenting the first line of every paragraph, even if the paragraph has no actual first-line indent. The special character looks like a double-right chevron and pushes the first line in approximately 2 em’s worth of space.
The next time you’re in InCopy, give it a try. I think you might like it.
Styles That Apply Themselves
Ideally, we could have the computer figure out which styles go where and have InCopy apply them on its own. We could just say “Computer, format text” (maybe speaking into the mouse as though it were a microphone, like Scotty did in that Star Trek movie) and go on to the next task. Wouldn’t that be nice?
(Listen to Scotty’s “Hello, computer!”)
You can get close to that functionality, actually, if your publication’s styles use two advanced InDesign features, Nested Styles and Next Styles. They work exactly the same in both InDesign and InCopy, but again, can only be added to a publication’s styles from within InDesign because the controls appear in the Paragraph Style Options dialog box. (On the other hand, If you’re working with a standalone InCopy document, you have full access to this dialog box and can create them yourself.)
Nested Styles
A nested style is a pre-defined character style that is “embedded” into a paragraph style’s definition. The program automatically applies the nested character style to some of the text in a paragraph whenever the so-configured paragraph style is applied to it. One or more nested styles can be included in a given paragraph style, saving at least two or three steps every time you apply the paragraph style.
Let’s say you have a paragraph style called Body-First that gets applied to the first paragraph in a story. This paragraph has no first-line indent; instead, the first three words should be bold and all caps. Normally, you apply the Body-First style to the paragraph, then select the first three words, open the Character Styles panel, and click BoldCaps-LeadIn to format them.
Instead, in Body-First’s style options, you can specify that the first three words should be formatted with the BoldCaps-LeadIn style. From then on, applying the Body-First style to a paragraph automatically applies not just the paragraph style, but also the specified character style to the lead-in phrase without you having to select the words or click on the character style. Magic!
Because they can be chained and looped, nested styles can do all sorts of automatic formatting for you. If you find yourself having to apply the same character style over and over, consult with your designers and the online help documents to see if you can use them for your publication.
Next Style
By default, “Same Style” is set up as the Next Style for every new paragraph style. You know this intuitively already — when you hit Return/Enter to start a new paragraph, the new text has the same paragraph style as the previous paragraph. But in the Style Options dialog box for Body-First, for example, the designer could specify that the Next Style should be (the plain) Body instead of the same Body-First style. That way the paragraph style will automatically switch to the correct one as soon as you start a new paragraph.
Similarly, specifying Body as the next style for Subhead, or Answer as the next style for Question (and vice versa) allows InCopy to automatically switch to the correct paragraph style as you start new paragraphs in the story you’re writing.
What if the story’s already written, but unformatted? Clicking inside the first paragraph and choosing Body-First from the Paragraph Styles panel applies that style to the paragraph, but won’t automatically apply Body-First’s Next Style to the subsequent paragraphs.
To use the Next Styles feature on existing text, you have to employ a slightly different technique. Make a text selection that starts with at least some of the text in the first paragraph (the one you want to apply the “starting” style to — Body-First in our example) and includes additional, subsequent paragraphs that should be formatted with the Next Style feature. Then right-click on the starting style’s name in the Paragraph Style panel and choose the command “Apply Body-First then Next Style.”
The “Apply [this style] then Next Style” command only appears in the context menu when you’ve made a text selection that includes text from two or more paragraphs, so be sure and do that first.
While the Nested Styles and Next Styles features are unrelated, they can of course work together. Imagine being able to select all the text in a story, choosing Apply Body-First and then Next Style, and then, “Hello, computer!” all the text is formatted with the correct paragraph styles and character styles. Sweet … and definitely possible.
Fastest Way(s) to Apply Styles
I was watching an editor format a story in InCopy the other day. While I was happy to see he was using the Paragraph Styles his designers included in the layout (as opposed to manually formatting text with commands in the Character and Paragraph panels), it was painful to see how much mousing and clicking he was doing for each style he applied.
He would drag over a paragraph’s worth of text to select it … mouse over to the far right edge of his monitor to reveal the Paragraph Styles panel … scroll through the list of styles and click on the one he wanted … one paragraph done. Move back to the text. Drag-select another paragraph. Go back to the panel …
After a minute or so my teeth were ground down to nubs and I couldn’t take it anymore. I gently inquired if I could show him a few alternative ways to apply styles that would be faster and put less of a strain on his poor mousing arm.
“Well, okay, if you in–” he was saying as I shoved him over and scooted my chair up to his computer.
Fast Styling
First, let’s see what you’ve got to work with. Look inside your Paragraph Styles and Character Styles panels. You may or may not have any character styles available — it depends on how the designer constructed the file — but you will almost always have a few paragraph styles in addiiton to the default Basic Paragraph. If you need more, you’ll have to ask the design team — remember, InCopy users can’t add or modify styles in a layout or assignment. I covered this in “Dueling Styles.”
If the designer included character styles (such as Bold Lead-in or Price), always apply the appropriate paragraph style first, then go back and apply character styles to the instances of text that needs it. Why? Because often, a character style doesn’t contain complete formatting instructions, it just changes one or two attributes — it turns text red and makes it bold, for example, but doesn’t change the typeface. By applying a character style to text already formatted with a paragraph style, you should see the final formatting you expect.
You do not have to select an entire paragraph to apply a paragraph style or formatting choice from the Paragraph panel; your blinking cursor inside the paragraph is sufficient for the program to know which one to format. (With character styles and local character formatting, though, you do have to select the text first.) If you want to apply the same paragraph style to more than one contiguous paragraph, drag-select some text in all the paragraphs first, then choose a style in the panel. One click, multiple paragraphs formatted.
When faced with the task of formatting a long, text-only story that needs a mix of styles applied, begin by selecting all the text (Edit > Select All, or Control/Command-A) and then applying the paragraph style that’s used by most of the story’s paragraphs, perhaps “Body”. This is the smartest way to work even if the story will eventually require five or ten different styles, because all you need to do now is click in the paragraphs that shouldn’t have that style and apply the right one. (The day I learned that the fastest way to format a Q&A article was to select all the text, apply the “Question” style; then go back and apply the “Answer” style to every other paragraph was a happy day.)
If you’re going to be doing a lot of text formatting, relocate the relevant panels where they’re convenient to reach. Detach the Paragraph Styles panel, for example, from its docked position by dragging its title bar or tab name to the middle of your screen, next to the column of text you’re working on, and release the mouse. Ta-da, a floating panel that requires a flick of the wrist to reach, as opposed to moving the mouse a half a foot each time.
Faster Styling
Did you know it’s possible to use custom keyboard shortcuts to apply paragraph and character styles? That way, as you’re editing text, you can quickly tap the keyboard shortcut for Body or Subhead or whatever, and bam, the paragraph is styled. The problem is that only the InDesign user can add keyboard shortcuts to styles, since the field is inside the Style Options dialog box .
So if you’re in InCopy and you’re not seeing keyboard shortcuts next to the style names in the panels, ask the design team if they can add some. If you ask nicely and bring them donuts, the next time you open the assignment or layout (or choose File > Update Design) you should see the shortcuts appear in your Paragraph Styles and Character Styles panels.
By the way, keyboard shortcuts for styles are cross-platform. If the designers assign Option-Num5 to the Body style on their Macs, it appears in Windows InCopy as Alt-Num5.
Many local formatting commands have built-in keyboard shortcuts, like Command/Control-Shift-B to make text bold and Option/Alt-Left/Right Arrow to track type in or out. You can find a list of these in the Help file (Help > InCopy Help). Select the entry “Keyboard Shortcuts” toward the bottom of the Help Contents and click the subcategory links for Keys for Working with Type and Keys for Working with Text to see them.
Fastest Styling
Alas, there is no Format Painter tool in InCopy as there is in Microsoft Word. But we do have something that comes close, and is actually much more flexible: Quick Apply. It’s available in CS2 and CS3, and requires just one keyboard shortcut to invoke: Control-Enter (Command-Return on a Mac).
Pressing that shortcut (or choosing Edit > Quick Apply) opens up the little-known Quick Apply window, which lists all styles available in the document. No need to mouse over to the window, just enter a few characters from the style’s name that you want to apply, and Quick Apply immediately filters the list of styles down to the ones that have those characters. As soon as you enter enough characters (or a unique string, like “h1″ if you want “Header - Level 1″) to distinguish that style from the others, it will be the only one in the Quick Apply list.
Too much work to filter it down? Just enter enough characters so the list filters down to a handful of matches, then use your arrow keys to highlight the one style you want.
Now press the Enter/Return key. The Quick Apply window goes away and the style you chose in its window is immediately applied to the paragraph or selection. Once you’ve applied a style from Quick Apply, it’s easy to apply that same style again elsewhere in the story. Move your Type cursor to the next bit of text you want to format, press Control-Enter to open Quick Apply, and press Enter again to close it. (That’s Command-Return, Return on a Mac). You don’t need to see what’s inside the Quick Apply window — it remembers the last style selected and applies it to the new text.
In CS3, Quick Apply includes not just styles, but all menu commands and scripts, which can be quite handy. However, if you’re mainly concerned with styles, you might want to turn those off so the list of matches isn’t overwhelming. You can do that by opening Quick Apply, revealing its categories pop-up menu (a little triangle to the left of the search field in the Quick Apply window) and unchecking the “Include:” categories you don’t want Quick Apply to worry its pretty little head about.
CS3 Updates Available from Adobe
CS3 users, are you up to date with the latest version of InCopy and InDesign? Look at your About screen (choose About InCopy or About InDesign from the program menus) to see the version. If it says “5.0″ with no extra numbers then you’re out of date.
Adobe released an update, 5.0.1 (CS3 = version 5) in the middle of October for both programs on both platforms. The InCopy update fixes “key issues” with text and fonts, dictionaries, and other things. To see exactly what’s fixed in InCopy; you can download the PDF:
Adobe InCopy CS3 5.01 Read Me
http://www.adobe.com/go/ic5_readme
InCopy, like all the Adobe software, is set by default to periodically check the Adobe web site for updates, and to alert you if one exists. It uses the little utility program, Adobe Updater (installed along with the main programs) to do the checking. Updater will reveal itself if it finds any updates and offers to download and install them. At this point you can tell it to go away without doing anything; or to download them but don’t install them. To invoke the Adobe Updater on your own, just chose the menu item “Updates…” from the Help menu.
If you don’t have admin access to your computer then you probably can’t install updates. In that case, have your IT people log on as an admin, then start up InCopy or InDesign and choose Updates to kick start the Adobe Updater. Or, you can download and install updates manually from Adobe’s web site:
Adobe - Latest Product Updates
http://www.adobe.com/downloads/updates/
It’s critical in an InDesign/InCopy workflow for everyone to be using the same version, especially if you’re encountering problems. (When clients contact me to troubleshoot something, it’s the first question I ask — “What version is everyone using?”.) So design and editorial should coordinate with each other to make sure everyone has downloaded and installed the patch to both InDesign CS3 and InCopy CS3.
I don’t mean to scare anyone; if some users are on 5.0 and others are on 5.0.1, everything will still work. It’s just that things will work better if everyone is at the same patch level. And, of course, you may be struggling with some issues that the patch fixes!