The Alert box they’re referring to is this one:

(Now, if you’ve been using the workflow for a while, don’t jump to conclusions about the frustrated users who ask about that message. Don’t you remember how confusing the whole system appeared to you at the start? We were all beginners at some point!)

Frustrated users, the simple explanation is this: The layout (.indd) or assignment (.inca) you’re opening in InCopy cannot find the external InCopy stories (.incx) that are supposed to be linked to the file — they’re missing, or they were never created in the first place. (You’ll be able to *see* the document’s stories in the one view you’re left with, Layout, but not edit them.)

Since Galley View and Story View only show the content of linked InCopy stories, there is no reason for those views to be available.

Actually, I’m not sure why Adobe’s InCopy team made that decision — to completely remove the views in the absence of linked stories, and to put up that alert. It just freaks people out. Why not keep the views available, but leave them devoid of content? Instead of an alert, InCopy could add a line of static text to the top of each view that said “There are no InCopy stories in this document.”

Identifying the Cause and Fixing It

The root of the problem is this: Either the InDesign user neglected to export stories from the InDesign layout to InCopy format (a required step for the workflow); or she did, but those exported .incx files are not where your document expects them to be (they’re “Missing”).

Unfortunately the Alert doesn’t tell you which of these situations is the cause. But you can find out for yourself. Just click the OK button in the Alert so that the file opens in Layout view.

Now open your Assignments panel, part of the default set of panels on the right side of the screen. The Assignments panel lists all editable stories — the linked InCopy files — in the document you have open, and their statuses (available, being edited by someone else, out-of date, and so on).

In a “healthy” file with editable stories that the document can find, the Assignments panel should look similar to this:

Those entries with the blue globe-and-paper icons? Each one represents a linked InCopy file in the document you have open in InCopy.

In contrast, the Assignments panel of a InDesign file with no linked InCopy stories at all would look like this (the arrow next to Unassigned InCopy Content is grayed out because there’s nothing to reveal):

The lack of entries here tells me that I’ve opened an InDesign layout (.indd) that hasn’t been prepared for the InCopy/InDesign workflow yet. It’s actually the default state of all the layouts at your company — without preparation, InDesign files are read-only to InCopy users. Which can be quite handy, since it means that with InCopy, you can open any InDesign file you can get to, even ones from last year (and from there, print them out, export them to PDF, or select text to copy and paste elsewhere). It’s an “InDesign Reader” similar to how Adobe Reader can open any PDF file.

But if you were expecting to be able to edit this file in InCopy, then it’s not so handy! The bitter truth is that stories can only be made editable for InCopy from within InDesign — it’s the only program with an Export to InCopy command. So go back to your designer and ask them to prep the file for you. If they don’t know how, have them open their InDesign Help file (from their Help menu) and read the section called “Sharing content between InCopy and InDesign.”

By the way, it’s also possible to open an assignment file (.inca) in InCopy that has no stories. This would be the case if the designer created an assignment in InDesign’s Assignments panel but forgot to add InCopy stories to it, or hasn’t had a chance to yet.

Missing InCopy Files

As I said earlier, you’ll also get the “Galley and Story View are Not Available” alert if the linked InCopy files do exist, but InCopy can’t find them. In that case, your Assignments panel will look like this:

The stories are listed, but the red stop sign icon tells you that InCopy can’t find them. It looks for the linked .incx files with the same name and in the same location — the same folder path — that the designer saved them to when he first exported them from the layout.

So, one cause might be that someone used the Finder or Windows Explorer to manually move the folder of .incx files to a different location, or they renamed them. (It’s okay to rename the stories by editing their names in Assignment panel, but not anywhere else.)

The more common reason, though, is that you (the InCopy user) moved the layout or assignment file from its original location to a different one, like from the server to your desktop, or from the designer’s computer to the server, or to your own. None of that is kosher in the workflow. Unless you’re using CS3’s remote workflow (e-mailed assignment packages), all assignments and exported .incx files need to be on a central file server, and everyone opens the files directly from there. If you’re using a layout-based workflow, the .indd file needs to be on the server too.

There are ways for either the InDesign or InCopy user to fix missing stories — to correct the path information stored in the layout or assignment — but that’s for another (future) post, as it’s a little complicated. Better to just manage the workflow files correctly in the first place!

You Might Find This Helpful

If you’re a newbie at this whole InCopy/InDesign workflow stuff, and you’ve encountered the “No InCopy Stories” alert and wondered why, now you know (she hopes).

But I would bet that you’d feel a LOT more comfortable with the process if you read the paper I wrote for Adobe’s InCopy marketing team, “Collaborative Editorial Workflow with InDesign CS3 and InCopy CS3.” I made sure to include lots of diagrams, screen shots and step-by-steps, so new users could gain an essential understanding of how the files work together — what goes where and who opens what.

You can download the 16-page PDF from the InCopy product page on Adobe’s web site, or you can click this link to download it directly (5 MB — all those screen shots).

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.

“We’re using fonts that don’t have their own built-in bold, italic, bold-ital. We’re using Franklin Gothic Demi for boldface. In Story view, this font doesn’t display as bold – which is very annoying to writers. Any ideas on how this problem could be solved?”

I certainly do. As the ME found out, the editing typeface you choose from the Galley and Story Appearance toolbar (at the lower left of the window) is limited to showing Plain (aka Regular, or Book), Bold, Italic and Bold Italic variations of any and all typefaces that text is actually formatted with in the document, as seen in Layout View.

So if the text is formatted with a Demi (equivalent to a “Medium” or “Semibold”) font style, InCopy has to make a decision: Should it show up in Galley/Story as Plain or as Bold? It always opts for Plain. It has to make similar mapping decisions for styles like Condensed, Heavy and Black.

Clever InCopy users will think, “A-ha! I’ll just choose the same font used for the text as my Galley/Story view display face!” But alas, it’s fruitless. For some reason, InCopy refuses to display any style in a Galley/Story Display font other than the usual regular, B, I and BI of the one you chose. Franklin Gothic Regular and Demi look the same: Regular. Only text formatted with Franklin Gothic Heavy will show up as Bold. You have to switch to Layout view to see that Demi is bolder than Regular, and Heavy bolder than Demi.

It’s a real pain when you’re using a non-standard style like Demi for, say, bold lead-ins to plain body text. You can’t tell in Galley/Story view where the bold lead-in ends, or even if it’s there in the first place, at least not by eyeballing it. (You can always select text and get an accurate readout of its formatting by looking in the Character or Character Styles panels.)

The Fix

InCopy users, the solution lies in a secret “extra” typeface you can specify for Galley/Story:

1. Make sure that your Galley/Story Display font — the one you choose from the toolbar — is set to a different typeface than the one you’re trying to see the different weights of. In other words, leave it at the default Letter Gothic typeface or whichever you prefer. Of course, the one you choose here should come with the usual Bold, Italic and Bold Italic style variations — if you choose one that doesn’t, InCopy alerts you.
2. Open the InCopy Preferences dialog box (from the Edit menu on Windows or the InCopy menu on Macs) and go to the “Galley and Story Display” section.
3. Click the checkbox next to “Override Preview Font” to turn it on, and from the dropdown menu of installed fonts choose the typeface that has all the variations you need to see. (In the ME’s situation, he should choose ITC Franklin Gothic from this menu. If your story is set in Myriad Pro, choose that one, if it’s using different weights of Futura, choose that, and so on.)
4. Click OK in Preferences and look at the text in Galley/Story. Hallelujah! Demi looks darker than Regular and lighter than Heavy!

It turns out that in addition to your single chosen display font, you can have InCopy show one other font in Galley/Story. It will only display that font if text is actually formatted with it; and if so, it displays ALL the style variations as needed.

You can change the “extra” font on the fly — perhaps another story in your document uses a different chock full ‘o styles typeface — just by going back to Preferences: Galley and Story Display and selecting a different font.

Woo-hoo!

The next time you find yourself in Needle in Haystack mode, do this: Go back to Layout view and drag over the first few words in your story to select them. Now switch back to Galley or Story. Your selection should be at the top of the window, with its gray story bar right above it. (Making a selection before switching views is also great for quickly finding text in the middle of a story in the new view.)

That’s not the tip, though! This one is: To make this story easy to find throughout the rest of your editing session, Option/Alt-click on the triangle in your story’s separator bar. That one click will collapse all the other stories into their separator bars except for the one you’re working on. Now, the only text visible in Galley/Story is the text belonging to your story.

Note that if your story was towards the bottom of the window, this “collapse all others” technique appears to work too well and you end up with an empty window! Don’t panic, it’s just that InCopy didn’t change the scroll bar position. A single tap on your keyboard’s Home key will autoscroll the window to the top and reveal the content.