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.

Each full-day workshop is “stand alone,” though I suppose some users might want to take advantage of the opportunity for face-to-face training and attend both days.

Tues., Sept. 15: Collaborative Workflows using Adobe InCopy and InDesign
Fee: $195 for all-day seminar; discounts available*

An introductory workshop to the InDesign/InCopy workflow, this session is ideal for prospective users or those who have recently switched and are still kind of unclear about it all. I’ll cover the different ways to set up the workflow (what gets installed where), who should (and shouldn’t) be using it, how to share stories and keep up to date, and so on. More details are available on the workshop registration page. or download the PDF brochure.

*Enter the InCopySecrets discount code ICS15 for $25 off! Other discounts are explained on the registration page.

Wed., Sept 16: Adobe InCopy and InDesign Master Class
Fee: $195 for all-day seminar; discounts available*

Though all users are welcome, I’m aiming this seminar at editors, designers, and production managers who have at least a few months of InCopy/InDesign (any version) under their belt. I plan to cover more advanced topics like creating InCopy layout templates, troubleshooting font issues and permission issues, tips and techniques for keeping all the files and filetypes straight and error-free, using cloud computing solutions for remote workflows, and more. More details are available on the Eventbrite registration page, or download the PDF brochure.

*Enter the InCopySecrets discount code ICS16 for $25 off!  Other discounts are explained on the registration page.

InCopy Webinars

If you can’t travel to Milwaukee, or can’t afford a full day outside of the office, but still need some InCopy workflow help,  how about an hour in front of your computer? I’m going to show just the most essential information from both of these workshops in two separate webinars.

Wed. Sept. 9: InCopy + InDesign: Getting Started
Fee: $39.00, for 1 hour webinar plus 15 minutes of Q&A
Early bird fee of $29.00 until Aug 28 2009

This is an introductory eSeminar on how the InCopy/InDesign workflow works, with essential information for new users on how to make the transition smoothly and successfully. Send me your questions beforehand, or stick around afterwards to ask them live. Register here.

Wed. Sept. 23: InCopy + InDesign: Tips and Techniques
Fee: $39.00, for 1 hour webinar plus 15 minutes of Q&A
Early bird fee of $29.00 until Aug 28 2009

I’ll be showing some of my favorite tips and how-tos for more advanced topics like remote workflows, troubleshooting, templates, and hidden InCopy features. Send me your questions beforehand, or stick around afterwards to ask them live. Register here.

——————-

So there you have it, four ways to get up to speed with the InCopy/InDesign workflow this September … I’m looking forward to seeing you at one or more of them!

Download the InCopy CS4 Hands-On Guide (5 MB PDF file)
Download the Sample Files.zip (150 MB) from my Acrobat.com share

Although the introductory section gives newbies an overview of the InCopy/InDesign workflow itself, the main focus of the guide are the new features in InCopy CS4. You become familiar with each of these new features — like cross-references, conditional text, the new Links panel, and so on — by downloading the accompanying sample files and following along with the step-by-step exercises in the guide. Instructions for installing the sample files and setting up your preferences are in the beginning of the Hands-On Guide.

If you’d like a peek, here’s my “anatomy of the Assignments panel in InDesign” illustration, from the introductory section:

The sample files used in the hands-on exercises are the same ones that Adobe sales staff use in their own demos, so if you’ve attended any of these, you may already be familiar with the fictional Check magazine.

[I still insist that this guy who's profiled in the magazine's feature story (he's supposed to be the lead actor in an upcoming feature film) is a lost Baldwin brother! But Adobe says no, he's just an actor the design firm hired for the shoot. I don't know — you tell me:]

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. 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

• Date 1: Tuesday, March 31, 2009; 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. (Eastern)
• Date 2: Tuesday, April 7, 2009; 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. (Eastern)
• You just need a web browser and a phone connection to participate.
• Webinar fee is per connecting site, not per attendee (e.g., you could have your whole staff attend in a conference room for a single registration fee).
• $50 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 InCopy compares to and can work with Word. I’ll show how files are shared between the two programs, cross-platform, and answer your specific questions during a final Q&A. If the Q&A extends beyond the end of the session, I’m okay with staying longer if you are. .

If you’ll be attending and you have some specific questions, please e-mail me beforehand and I’ll try my best to address them during my presentation (or I’ll let you know if it’s outside of the scope of the session).

Participants will receive a PDF handout of the slides/key points afterwards.

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).

Look for the link on the InCopy product page [edit: Adobe removed the link when InCopy CS4 was released], or cut to the chase and download the PDF here (4 MB).

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.

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.

And InCopy is a mash-up of the two. It’s an Adobe Creative Suite program designed to appeal to editors most familiar with Microsoft Word. That’s why it has horizontal toolbars at the top and the bottom along with the usual side palettes at the right.

You’ve probably already discovered various ways to rearrange the palettes … converting the side ones to floating palettes, opening new palettes from the Window menu, docking palettes on the left side as well as the right, saving palette arrangements as Workspaces, and so on.

Did you know that you can also convert the toolbars to palettes, and the palettes to toolbars? It’s a feature uniquely InCopy.

Toolbars to Palettes

To turn a toolbar into a floating palette, press and drag on its “grab bar” — a tiny, rectangular vertical strip at the left end of it. In CS2 the grab bar looks like it’s textured, in CS3 it’s a flat, dark grey color. As you drag the toolbar over your main window area you’ll see its outline appear. Release the mouse button and voila, it’s a palette.

Some of the toolbars look quite different when they’re a palette — try it with the CopyFit toolbar to see what I mean. These types sprout a Close box and can be docked to the sides of the monitor just like the other palettes.

Other toolbars aren’t so flexible, such as the Command Bar (the one with icons for Open, Save, Print, etc.). These can float, so you can drag them around the screen and tuck them into a corner or something; but they can’t be collapsed into side palettes. To close them completely, choose their name from the Window menu. (And choose it again to re-open it.)

Rearranging Toolbars

All toolbars, though, can be relocated to either the top or the bottom of the screen. You can even change their order (maybe you’d like the Track Changes toolbar at the far left?), and add additional toolbar rows.

To do any of this, just drag from their grab bar and drop them where you want them in their new toolbar position. They pop right in like they’ve lived there for years.

You can drop them anywhere in the toolbar area — to the left or right of another toolbar, into the empty gray area, or directly above or below an existing toolbar, if you want to make multiple toolbar rows a la Microsoft Word.

Palettes to Toolbars

To turn a palette, like the Paragraph Styles palette, into a toolbar, hold your mouse button down on its “sensitive area” and drag and drop it on the top or bottom toolbar well. In CS2 the sensitive area of a palette is its tab, the tab containing the name of the palette. In CS3 you can drag the tab or title bar at the top of the palette (err, panel).

Not every palette can be turned into a toolbar. The Table palette, for example, will just sit there overlapping the toolbar when you drop it, no matter how gently you drag its sensitive area. (ahem.)

The ones that convert with aplomb are Paragraph, Paragraph Styles (very cool to have a dropdown or pop-up list of styles in the toolbar!), Character, Character Styles, Swatches, and Change Info.

To turn them back into palettes, drag from their grab bar at the far left and drop them anywhere in the main window area.

Save Your Work

When you’re done rearranging the furniture, remember that you can save your new look by choosing Window > Workspaces > Save Workspace. That way you can always recall it instantly, even if someone deletes your InCopy preferences (often a first troubleshooting step). Workspaces aren’t deleted when preferences are rebuilt, but the palettes are reset to their default positions. Choose Window > Workspace > [name of your workspace] to get it back the to way you want it.

InCopy CS3 + InDesign CS3 Integration
http://movielibrary.lynda.com/html/modPage.asp?ID=323

If you’re not a lynda.com member, you can only view the first few introductory Quicktime movies for free. Once you subscribe (as low as $30 for a month), all the videos are accessible, for my title and almost 300 other ones.

Or, you can fill out a simple web form and then log in for a free 7-day trial of everything on lynda.com:

Free Lynda.com Trial
http://lynda.com/freepass/seneca

Why I’m Excited

It’s not just that it’s sort of thrilling to see my name included in lynda.com’s drop-down list of Search by Author, in the company of luminaries like Deke McClelland, Bert Monroy, Eric Meyer and (of course) David Blatner. Or that I may earn some royalties if enough people view my videos — that and a quarter will buy you a candy bar; InCopy is still a pretty small market.

It’s that after teaching InCopy and InDesign to so many end users for the past few years, it was immensely satisfying to pull it all together in a way that I think makes the most sense for users new to the workflow. There are over eighty videos (a total of 8 hours of training), with entire “chapters” devoted to essential topics like Tracking Changes and Assignment Workflows.

Initially, I had so much content and so many techniques and tips I wanted to include — for editors, designers, and production managers — I didn’t know where to start. Chris Mattia, my Lynda.com producer, spent hours helping me to whittle and finesse my massive outline to an understandable, smooth flow of information.

He was also gung-ho for an idea of mine that lynda.com had never done before: Video tutorials that switched between the Mac and Windows interfaces in single, smooth shots. I thought this would be the most realistic way to teach the workflow; since the typical scenario is that designers are on Macs using InDesign; writers are on Windows using InCopy.

Now, if you watch any of the workflow-specific tutorials, you’ll see how the same layout looks to a Mac-based designer in InDesign and a Windows-based editor in InCopy, and how each person is notified of and updates the other’s changes. You can’t even tell we had to use two different video capture programs to make the magic happen.

Behind the Scenes at Lynda.com

These videos are not your typical YouTube things. The people at Lynda.com have two fully-outfitted professional recording studios, one on either coast. Tutorial authors are flown in, put up in a nearby hotel, paired up with an on-site video producer, and then basically held captive in a soundbooth for as long as it takes to complete the title. (Captivity is easy to take when you’re in the beautiful resort town of Ojai, California, though.)

My title took a solid week. Each five-to-ten minute video took an average of 30-40 minutes to set up, rehearse, record, and re-record. And that was just for the recording itself. There were also weeks of outline and file preparation, and the weeks of “post” by the lynda.com sound and video engineers — editing all the raw captures into tight and smooth video tutorials.

Knowing all the work that goes into a single title, I’m so impressed that Lynda.com has hundreds more, and are releasing new ones seemingly every week. (The latest lynda.com email in my InBox announced four new titles.)

And it’s not just design related. If you need to get up to speed on general business programs like Excel 2007, Outlook, and Access, Lynda.com has you covered. They have an impressive collection of non-software-specific titles too, topics like Home & Small Office Networking, Blogging, Podcasting, and Computer Privacy & Security.

Take a few minutes today and set the program up to run the way you want it to, by default. Application defaults are easy to modify in InCopy; just choose your desired Preference settings, palette arrangements and menu choices when no documents are open in the program. To be doubly sure your changes are permanent, quit out of InCopy after tweaking its defaults, then start it up again before you open any documents.

Here are a few changes that a lot of the editors I’ve worked with find useful:

Default View

InCopy’s default is to show you a newly-opened file in Story View, which most users find less than helpful with an unfamiliar layout or assignment.

If you go to the View menu (with no documents open, remember) you’ll see a checkmark next to Story. Change the default by choosing Layout. That’s it! From now on, all the files open in Layout view from the start.

Drag and Drop Editing

The ability to drag selected text from one location and drop it elsewhere in the story is a “love it or hate it” feature for most users. InCopy’s defaults are to split the difference: it’s enabled in Galley/Story but disabled in Layout.

Go to InCopy > Preferences (or Edit > Preferences on Windows) and select the Type category to reveal the Drag and Drop Text Editing checkboxes. By default, only the Galley/Story one is checked. If you’re a “love it,” turn on the checkbox for Layout so the feature is available in any view; if you’re a “hate it,” turn off the checkbox for Galley/Story so it’s disabled everywhere.

Palette Arrangement
Have you taken the time to create a custom Workspace (Window > Workspace > Save Workspace) for yourself? Choose that workspace with no documents open and it’ll be the default palette arrangement the next time you open InCopy.

However, since InCopy remembers palette locations from one editing session to the next — that’s a feature not a bug, son — you’ll need to reset them to your workspace quite frequently. A solution to that is to assign a keyboard shortcut to your workspace in Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts > Product Area: Window Menu (scroll down to the entries for Workspaces). That way, a quick tap on F1 or whatever key you assign to your workspace will clean them right up.

Dynamic Spelling

When Dynamic Spelling is enabled, InCopy does on-the-fly spell checking a la Microsoft Word, adding non-printing red squiggly underlines to words it doesn’t recognize in its dictionary. Right-clicking (Ctrl-clicking with a one-button mouse) on the flagged words reveals a list of suggested corrections to choose from, as well as commands to ignore the word or to add it to the dictionary. It also flags capitalization errors and repeated words with a green squiggly.

InCopy has Dynamic Spelling turned off by default. If you’d prefer it enabled in all your documents, choose it from the Edit > Spelling fly-out menu with no documents open. You could always turn it off (just choose it again, it’s a toggle) if it gets too distracting in certain stories.

Others

There are a ton more defaults you can change — hide guides, turn off Tool tips, show the Structure panel — so InCopy works the way you want it to work. I hope this short list gets you motivated to explore!

If you click “Compare Editions” to see the product matrix, you’ll see lots of familiar faces. CS3 versions of InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator, of course. Also Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and Flash. And A/V software like Premiere and Soundbooth.

But InCopy CS3 is nowhere to be found. Despite the CS3 moniker, it’s not part of any official Suite. Yet you’d think they could at least throw us a bone in a sidebar or footnote, huh? A little link to the InCopy CS3 page? (”Oh yeah, while we’re talking about CS3, here’s another CS3 program…”)

Ah well. InCopy likes to play hard to get. Here you go –
http://www.adobe.com/products/incopy/

Despite the wonderful quote at the top — heh — the InCopy CS3 web page still looks a little “under construction” to me. The new features it lists are somewhat generic (”Text productivity improvements”) and there are no screen shots. I’m hoping that Adobe will fill in the page with solid information in coming weeks. In the meantime, you can click the page’s “Learn about new features” text link for a few new paragraphs of details.

You might also want to visit the more robust InDesign CS3 product page (http://www.adobe.com/products/indesign/) and its Feature Tour movie; remember, the two programs share 98% of their DNA, especially as far as text processing features are concerned. Like InDesign CS3, InCopy CS3 now has table and cell styles, text variables, much-improved and powerful bulleted and numbered lists, Find/Change with GREP for variable search and replace routines, and so on.

And heads-up: For the first time, the default InDesign CS3 installation includes all the Live Edit plug-ins necessary for an IC/ID workflow. Every InDesign user will have a Notes menu, for example, even if they’re not using InCopy. I love how this small decision by the engineers will remove a major stumbling block for curious users who want try out the workflow.

Okay, let’s move on to the new features specific to InCopy and the workflow itself.

Remote Workflow Support

The big new feature is support for remote InCopy users via e-mail based Assignments. From InDesign CS3 designers can “package” an assignment and send that one single package file via e-mail to an editor away from the office. Remote InCopy users just double-click packages to open them directly in InCopy, where they appear just like a regular Assignment.

When they’re done editing stories, off-site InCopy users can use their Assignments panel to re-package it for sending to another remote editor, or they can package it for returning to the designer. Story check-in/check-out, and updating returned, modified files is handled automatically by the packaging routine.

It’s all very slick and for this feature alone is worth the upgrade, in my opinion. I wrote up a detailed article all about the new Package commands, complete with screen shots, for InDesignSecrets.com:
http://indesignsecrets.com/remote-workflow-support-in-incopyindesign-cs3.php

Assignments Improvements

InDesign CS3 users can now drag and drop text frames onto the Assignments panel. Just drop the selection on the New Assignment icon and let InDesign do the driving automatically. It creates a new assignment (you’re prompted for the name and type of assignment) and saves it, exports and saves the InCopy .incx files, creates folders on the server to hold everything neatly, and associates the .incx files with the new assignment in the panel. All with just a single drag and drop!

It can do all this automatically because CS3 now names and saves .inca and .incx files to default locations with default naming conventions, quietly and behind the scenes. Sweet.

I was happy to see that assignments now include low-res image previews. Now, even if the original image is not accessible, InCopy users see the image preview instead of a gray box as in CS2. Also, the problem with automatic page numbering is fixed. InCopy users see the same page numbers in their layout that the InDesign user sees, regardless of where the spreads in the assignment are located in the full layout.

Designers will be glad to learn that they can finally use the Export All commands (Export All Stories to InCopy, for example) without inadvertently exporting master page items, which are now excluded automatically.

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Story Ordering and Renaming
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This feature is very cool, and will be quite welcome by many InCopy users. After you open a layout or assignment in InCopy, you can go to Story or Galley view and drag the story bars around to re-order the stories. Yes, folks, you can finally put the stories in a logical order (headline, followed by byline, followed by main story, with all the captions at the end, for example) so that galley proof printouts make sense.

Also useful: After you check out a story, you can rename it in the Assignments panel. Haven’t you ever wished you could change “Magazine_Issue-story1-There once was a man from Nantu.incx” to “Nantucket feature.incx”? And rename the rest of the other stories in the panel so you could make sense of them? Now you can. The best part is that changing the names here in your Assignments panel doesn’t change the actual filenames on the server, so existing links and lock files remain safely intact. Renamed stories “stick” with the files even after you check them back in.

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Other Tweaks
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Stories and pictures that are not “managed” (haven’t been exported to InCopy) appear ghosted back a bit in InCopy’s Layout view, making it easier to find the content you’re supposed to work on. They appear normally, though, when you change the Screen Mode to Preview from the View menu. Also, new keyboard shortcuts have been added to make navigating Galley and Story view stories a bit easier.

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Pricing
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The most useful information on Adobe’s InCopy CS3 web page (other than the quote) is that it tells you how much it’ll cost. Upgrading from InCopy CS1 or CS2 is the same price, only $89. I think that’s quite fair. A new copy will set you back $249, same as before.

Remember, if you’re going to be ordering more than four or five new copies for your workgroup, go with the Transactional Licensing Program (aka Open Options). You’ll probably save some money, especially when the next upgrade comes around, and serial numbers are much easier to manage. You can buy under the TLP either directly from Adobe or from a reseller. More info on the program is here:
http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/openoptions/tlp.htm

There are no tryouts of the CS3 programs available yet on Adobe’s web site, all you can do is preorder. But historically, Adobe starts posting fully-enabled 30-day tryouts a few weeks after the applications are officially released (shipping) … so check their Downloads page sometime in May.