Q&A from the InCopy Tips Webinar, Part 2
Picking up where I left off, here are some more great questions (and my answers) that the attendees of my InCopy Tips & Techniques webinar had during and after the main presentation.
Q: Can you only create packages in InDesign?
A: I know you’re referring to e-mail-based Assignments, aka InCopy packages (INCP in CS3, or ICAP in CS4) or assignment packages; and the answer is “essentially, yes.” Only InDesign can initiate the remote workflow by creating an InCopy package “from scratch,” that is, from a regular assignment in a layout. An InCopy user can’t do this; they can’t decide on the fly, “Oh I think I’ll work on this from home, I’ll send it to myself.” However, if an InCopy user receives a package from a designer and opens it in InCopy; then she can create another package from it. She can either return it to the designer as an InDesign package, or repackage it into another InCopy package, assumably for another editor (by choosing Forward to InCopy from her Assignments panel).
Can you explain again why the remote workflow won’t work with remote designers?
Q&A from the InCopy Tips Webinar, Part 1
We had a great crowd at last month’s webinar, InCopy/InDesign Tips and Tricks! People logged in from all over the world and with all sorts of publishing backgrounds. Since no one dropped out during the 90 minute session, and everyone rated the session “good” or “great” in the poll at the end, I’d say it was a success! (You can sign up to access and watch the recording here, if you like. )
As promised, attendees, I grabbed the entire transcript from the Chat window so I could make sure and answer all your questions, which I do so below to the first section. Some of these I already covered during the 30 minute Q&A — I’ll still reprise the answers here for the benefit of my blog readers.
Q: Would you say again how do you set up layout view as default?
A: Start up InCopy but don’t open any files. Choose Layout View from the View menu. It should now carry a checkmark (before, Story View had the checkmark). From now on, when you open files they’ll open in Layout view. Read more
InCopy and InDesign 6.04 Update Now Available
This morning, Adobe released the “6.04″ updater, a significant bug fix for the Mac and Windows versions of InDesign CS4 and InCopy CS4. You can download the updater application directly from within either program — look for the “Check for Updates” command — or go to Adobe’s Download > Updates section of their web site and download it manually. If you haven’t been keeping up with your CS4 bug fixes and you’re not quite up to 6.03 yet, don’t worry, the 6.04 updater is cumulative: it can update any 6.x version of InDesign or InCopy. Read more
Join me during one of my InCopy/InDesign seminars!
September 2009 is Learn InCopy month at InCopySecrets.com! Whether you’re a newbie wondering if InCopy could possibly work at your company; or you’re a veteran InCopy workflow team member in need of higher-level training, tips, tricks and troubleshooting help, I’ve got something for you.
Full-day InCopy seminars
First, I’m really excited to be able to do two full days of InCopy/InDesign workshops on September 15 and 16. (Finally, I’ll have the time to cover everything I want to cover!) I’ll be doing these in one of the beautiful presentation halls at the Institute for Graphics and Imaging, just west of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It’s the same place where I did a 2-day InDesign Master Class a couple years ago, if any of you were there. Read more
Using InCopy to Clean Up Word Files
Tom, a journalism professor and InDesign/InCopy user, e-mailed me about his interesting use of InCopy as kind of a “Word cleaner plug-in:”
Because I like and understand InDesign and have had quirky problems using Word files, I’ve come up with a new workflow that puts InCopy in the middle. Quickly: I edit in Word then later open the file in InCopy where I do all of my formatting, knowing it will be there when I place the InCopy file in InDesign.
That was pretty neat … and I know that using InCopy to “prep” Word files for InDesign is standard practice in a lot of my client’s workflows.
Tom had a question about something, though:
I have a workspace named Newsletter, and InCopy opens in that workspace. But when I open a story from Word, all of my paragraph styles, etc., disappear and I have to take a second to reload them. I’ve tried saving the workspace with the paragraph styles open, but it doesn’t seem to matter.
As Tom discovered, paragraph styles (or any styles) that are within the panel are ignored when you create and save a workspace. Read more
Stealth Glitch: Accidental Accents in Filenames
When Mac users and Windows users need to share the same files, it’s important to use “lowest common denominator” types of filenames to avoid platform-specific problems with special characters. The Mac is perfectly fine with, say, a “greater than” symbol (OurLayout>v2.indd), while Windows most definitely is not. And when files are saved to and opened from a Windows server, making sure their names comply with the server OS’s rules is even more important.
When you run into an issue where users on one platform can check out stories from a layout or assignment, but users on the other platform cannot, look at the filenames to make sure they’re not the root of the problem. (After making sure everyone’s server permissions are correct, of course.) Read more
InCopy CS4 Hands-On Guide
Great news! Adobe has given me permission to post the InCopy CS4 Hands-On Guide, a 38-page PDF that I wrote for them last year, on the InCopySecrets.com blog. This is essentially the same guide they gave to software reviewers right before CS4 came out, to help get them up to speed with the new features, but with added content for new users.
Download the InCopy CS4 Hands-On Guide (5 MB PDF file)
Download the Sample Files.zip (150 MB) from my Acrobat.com share
InCopy for Editors Webinar: Two New Dates, Same Discount Code
As I mentioned in a previous post, Copyediting magazine asked me to present a webinar for their subscribers and the general public called InCopy for Editors. Unfortunately, it took us too long to resolve some initial technical difficulties (oh you gotta love them computers—but we figured it out) during the originally-scheduled presentation, so we had to cancel it and reschedule.
To make it easier for those companies to find a compatible date, we’re going to do the exact same webinar twice over the next two weeks. That means there are more seats available for any new attendees; and happily, the $50 discount code they gave me is still valid for either of the new sessions. Read more
New Plug-in Saves Versions of Workflow Stories
One of the most frequent questions I hear from new InDesign/InCopy workflow users (or publishers considering moving to it) is, “How can we save a version of a story we’ve checked out?”
Mainly it’s editors who ask the question, but designers too would appreciate the ability to occasionally save a version of the contents of a text frame being shared with InCopy. Well, I now have a solution, but need your help. More on that further down.
As InCopy users know, versioning is not built in to the workflow. When you check out a story in a layout or assignment, even the Save As command is dimmed. You can only do a Save As with standalone InCopy files. So editorial users make do with Track Changes, or with some manual workarounds. (Note that K4 and SmartConnection systems have a versioning feature, I believe, but I’m talking about the “normal” InCopy workflow here.) And in InDesign, even if you do a Save As to the layout, the text frames are still linked to the first version’s InCopy stories.
So last year I joined forces with a couple InDesign/InCopy developer geeks (and I mean that as a compliment), Peter Truskier and Jim Birkenseer, to address the issue. Last month we released the first beta version of InVersion. It’s a low-footprint plug-in for InDesign and InCopy that lets you save and restore versions of each story in your publication, whenever you want. Read more
Discount Code for “Editing in InCopy” Webinar
Copyediting magazine has asked me to present a 60-minute live webinar (plus an optional 30 minutes for Q&A) to its subscribers and interested attendees on Adobe InCopy. The session is this coming Tuesday [will be rescheduled due to technical difficulties! Oh those pesky computers. I'll announce the new date(s) here when they're confirmed] but I was recently able to wrangle a discount code from them so I thought I should broadcast the news.
I’m assuming most people visiting this blog are already using InCopy, but maybe not, or maybe you have a colleague who’s still suffering under the yoke of paper mark-up and would appreciate the info I’ll be presenting. Please send them this URL.
Editing in InCopy, a 60-minute interactive webinar
- New date/time to be announced shortly (likely end of March/early April)
- You just need a web browser and an Internet connection to attend.
- Details/registration at the Copyediting webinar page
- Discount code: Please enter the word “GEEKNESS” in the field marked “Promo Code” on the registration form, or call McMurry (the publisher) at 888-0303-2373, to register at the special rate of $179 (a $50 savings) per dial-in site. The regular price, $229, will be reflected on your online receipt, but your card will be charged the lower rate.
I’m aiming the content at editors and writers (as opposed to designers), to introduce them to InCopy and the InCopy/InDesign workflow and how IC compares and can work with Word. About 1/3 the presentation will be me explaining how it works via slides and purty pictures, 1/3 will be me showing it “live” by sharing my screen while I take a pub through InDesign and InCopy and back again, and 1/3 will be for Q&A. from the audience.
Participants will receive a PDF handout of the slides/key points afterwards.