At least once a month, an InCopy user e-mails me and asks if Track Changes could be turned on by default for all stories. The answer is no, unfortunately.

While it seems at first that it is a customizable default — you can turn it on with no documents open — it only applies to documents you create from InCopy’s File > New command, not to layouts or assignments or the workflow stories they contain.

The only way for one of these stories to “remember” that Tracked Changes should be active is for an InCopy user to check it out, turn on Track Changes, and check it back in.

You can automate this somewhat, though:

1. Before anyone checks out any stories, have an editor, a production manager, or a designer with InCopy open the layout (the .indd file) in InCopy and shift-click all the assignment names in the Assignments palette, including the “Unassigned InCopy Content” one if it has any stories. (If you’re not using Assignments, just select the Unassigned category).
2. Choose Check Out from the palette menu (or press Command/Control-F9) to check out all the stories in the palette selection.
3. Go to the Track Changes menu and choose Enable Tracking in All Stories.
4. Finally, close the file, clicking the OK button at the prompt to check in all the stories.

So … doable, but not ideal. An “enable Track Changes” checkbox in InDesign, something the designer could turn on as they export stories, would be a great feature request for the next version (CS4) of InDesign; or even something in InCopy that would do the same thing. Take a second to fill out a Feature Request, the time is ripe! (And I know for a fact that the right people read these):

Adobe’s Feature Request Form
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

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!

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.