Indesign - how to use

InDesign - how to use guide

Contents 

Getting started / 3 

Templates 

Workspace 

Screen mode 

Margins and Bleeds 

Guides 

Tools 

Fill & Stroke 

Choosing a template 

Creating a document / 6 

Master pages 

Frames 

Linked images 

Working with text frames 

Paragraph & Character Styles 

Working with Colour 

Tables 

Find/Change 

Arrows and Pointers 

Convert Shape 

Hyperlinks 

Exporting to PDF / 12 

Viewing in Acrobat 

InDesign - how to use guide AWW inspired environments | 2

Getting started 

Templates 

The templates live in the L: Drive > AWW BID Library > L 

Templates > Indesign Templates. 

L:\AWW BID Library\J Templates\Indesign Templates 

Workspace 

If you’re using text in your document you will probably be 

best off choosing ‘Typography’ as your main working 

mode from the top right-hand side drop-down menu. This 

mode will add all the tools you’ll need when formatting text, 

such as paragraph styles, on your right-hand side panel. 

Tip: Open indesign and select this as your working mode 

while you have no documents open. This way it will become 

your default setting whenever you use InDesign. 

Screen mode 

At the bottom of your ‘Tools’ panel on the left-hand side 

of your screen you will find the settings for your screen 

mode. (Alternatively go to View > Screen Mode.) 

You will most likely only need 2 different screen modes 

while working: ‘Normal’ and ‘Preview’. Use ‘Normal’ when 

you’re adding boxes, aligining items or generally designing 

your layout. Preview should only be used when checking 

text and having a final look through the document. 

‘Presentation’ mode can be used if you want to check 

how your document will view as a slide show. Press Esc 

to return to normal viewing mode. 

Tip: Switch between viewing modes quickly by pressing the 

W -key. (Make sure you’re not using the type tool at the time 

though, or you will add unwanted w’s in your text : ) 

Here they are : ) 

InDesign - how to use guide Back to contents 

AWW inspired environments | 3

Margins and Bleeds 

The templates already have margins and bleeds set up 

so you won’t need to add them. The margins define your 

‘playing’ area, within which all your text and picture frames 

should be. The logo, page numbers and headers / footers 

are outside of this area so if you keep within the margins 

when designing the layout, you won’t end up accidentally 

placing items on top of the master page elements. 

Should you wish to alter the number of columns in your 

document go to Layout > Margins and Columns and 

adjust accordingly. 

The bleed is the 3mm area (showing as a red line) 

outside of your page, which is only visible in the ‘Normal’ 

viewing mode. Unless you’re sending your document to 

a professional printer you won’t need to worry about it. 

However, if you are making boards where a colour or an 

image should print right to the edge, extend the frame to 

fill the bleed area - this is in order to eliminate the risk of 

being left with thin white lines on the edges of the boards 

in case the print is slightly off centre. 

Guides 

As with margins, the guides have already been set up 

in the templates. However, should you wish to create 

your own guides, you can do this by going to Layout > 

Create Guides and then choose the number of rows and 

columns you need. You also have the option to place 

these either within the page or within your margins. 

Should you need to lock, delete or hide some of 

your guides go to View > Grids & Guides and select 

accordingly. 

Bleed Margins Columns Gutter Guides 



Tools 

The tools you’re most likely to use are the; 

• selection tool (black arrow), 

• direct selection tool (white arrow), 

• type tool, and 

• frame tool (for image and text frames), and 

• free transform tool. 

The difference between the ‘selection tool’ and the 

‘direct selection tool’ is that the black arrow selects 

the whole object, whereas the white arrow allows you to 

select only certain parts of it. If it’s a picture frame, the 

black arrow selects the frame, whereas the white arrow 

allows you to select the picture inside it. 

The ‘free transform tool’ allows you to resize a number 

of objects at the same time whilst keeping them all in 

proportion. 

If you see a little black arrowhead on the bottom right 

corner of the tool, click and hold, and it will reveal more 

tools in that category. 

Fill & Stroke 

Depending on which one sits on top, the ‘Fill and 

Stroke’ pane informs you which one is currently ‘active’, 

i.e. if you apply a swatch or a colour to a frame, the one 

that’s on top will be coloured. Or should you wish to take 

the colour off, press the ‘Apply none’ below. 

Direct selection tool 

Selection tool 

Type tool 

Frame tool 

Free transform tool 

Fill & Stroke 

Choosing a template 

There are a number of templates to choose from, 

depending on your needs - most of them self-explanatory. 

The difference between ‘Boards’ and ‘Reports’ is that 

the reports have a wider spine on the left hand side 

whereas the boards are centered. 

Please use the A3 landscape boards for a slide show 

presentation or, if you are doing a general presentation, 

there is a shortcut in the templates folder that takes you to 

a ready-made ‘Pick ‘n’ Mix’ presentation template, which 

has a short section to introduce the practice followed by all 

of our sectors from which you can delete the ones you don’t 

need. (Remember to save a copy - do not save over it!) 

Use a double sided document where possible to save 

paper. Although please bear in mind that unless the 

double sided report is also printed double sided, using it 

will be pointless. 

If you’re re-using an old report, remember to do a File > 

Save As in order to keep file sizes as small as possible. 

This not only saves server space, but also makes it quicker 

to work on your document as it will clear out any gunk that 

has accumulated while you’ve been working on the file. 

Apply none 



Creating a Document 

Master pages 

Master pages are used to automatically insert layout 

elements on various pages. All elements of the master 

page are placed onto any page you apply the master to 

(by dragging the master page to the pages pane), and 

these are by default locked on the layout, which allows 

you to further develop the page without worrying about 

accidentally modifying the pre-defined elements (such as 

page numbers, grids and guides, and graphic elements). 

The templates’ master pages will usually need adjusting 

before you start the document by adding the name of the 

project and the document and possibly a date on them. 

Double click on the master page in order to change the 

default text to suit your document. 

Tip: Should you need to unlock any items on the master 

page, for example, if you place a full-bleed image on the page 

and want the page number to appear on top of it, clicking the 

frame whilst pressing Ctrl + Shift will release it, after which 

you can then move the page number on top of the image (Ctrl 

+ Shift + ] or Object > Arrange > Bring to Front). 

Frames 

InDesign places your content in frames. This goes for 

both text and images as well as databases and interactive 

content. There are two types of frames: text and image. 

The text frame is fairly self-explanatory. After creating 

the shape for a text frame (typically a rectangle, but it 

could be a circle or a custom shape drawn with the Pen 

tool), you can either type directly into it or paste text from 

another document. 

Image frames work in a similar way. After creating an 

image frame (either by selecting one of the default shapes 

or drawing one yourself), you can fill it with color or place 

an image inside it. This is done by either dragging and 

dropping an image into the frame or by going to File > 

Place (Ctrl + D). If you drag content on top of an existing 

frame, it will replace the existing content but leave the 

size and cropping intact. 

Resizing content in a frame 

To keep the frame the same size and fit the content 

proportionally, press Ctrl + Option + Shift + E. (Note 

that if the image and frame have different proportions, 

then some white space will be left.) 

To fill the frame proportionally, use Ctrl + Option + Shift 

+ C. (If the image and frame have different proportions, 

the image will be resized and end up larger than the 

frame, being cropped at the edges.) 

To center the content in the frame, use Ctrl + Shift + E. 

Tip: All of the above can also 

be done by using the icons 

on the top right corner while 

the frame is selected. 

Rotating content inside a frame 

Should you ever need to rotate your image, rather than 

rotating the whole frame and potentially placing it over 

other items on your layout, rotate the image inside it. 

Choose your image with the Direct Selection Tool (the 

white arrow) and press ‘R’ for the rotation tool. The 

corner that determines which way your image will rotate 

can be defined on the ‘Reference Point’ in the top left 

corner of your screen. 

Inserting multiple page PDFs 

If you need to insert a multiple page PDF into your 

document, make sure you have the ‘Show Import 

Options’ box ticked when placing the PDF. This will then 

bring up another pane where you must tick ‘All’ under 

the Pages menu. Then just click away until you run out of 

pages to insert. 



Linked images 

Rather than embedding images directly onto your pages, 

InDesign creates links to image files saved on your 

computer. Because linked files remain separate, you can 

edit them in the applications in which they originate and 

update their links in InDesign. 

Open the fly-out menu at the top right corner of the ‘Links’ 

pane (or right-click on the link directly) to access a long 

list of options you can apply to your linked image, such as 

updating it or revealing it in Explorer. Inapplicable options 

appear grayed out. 

InDesign can deal with many image formats (including 

JPEG, PNG, EPS, PICT, PDF, PSD and TIFF). Although 

just because you can link a PSD image into a document 

doesn’t mean that you should - PSDs take up significant 

memory, which can sometimes cause problems when 

exporting as PDF or simply slow the programme down. 

If you are preparing a file for print, make sure the images 

are in an acceptable format. If you’re using a file format 

that allows for low-resolution settings, such as JPEG, 

check that the images have a minimum resolution of 150 

pixels per inch (PPI) (althoguh 300 is much better) and 

ideally they should be saved in CMYK color mode. 

You don’t need to open the image in Photoshop to check 

its resolution, just click on F8 and a pop up info box 

should tell you the ‘Actual PPI’ (= the image’s original 

PPI) and the ‘Effective PPI’. Effective PPI is simply the 

final resolution of any picture at the actual scale that it is 

placed within the document. This is quite simple; if you 

place a 72 PPI image at 100% its effective resolution is 72 

PPI. If you place it at 50% (half size) the effective resolution 

doubles and the result is 144 PPI. If you place it at 25% 

the effective resolution is quadrupled and is then 288%. 

You can determine the effective resolution of an image by 

dividing the actual image resolution by the scale. 

REMEMBER: When placing an image into a coloured ‘space 

holder’ frame, you need to delete the fill colour from that 

frame or it will show as a very thin border in the final document! 

Tip: In order to check how your image will print before 

exporting to PDF you can do this by going to View > 

Overprint Preview. However, working on the document 

while on this mode will be considerably slower than normal. 

Working with text frames 

When you have a long bit of text that will span across 

many columns, you can check how your text frames are 

linked to each other by turning on your ‘text threads’ by 

going to View > Extras > Show Text Threads. You’ll know 

when text frames are linked when there’s a little blue 

arrow at the bottom right corner of the frame while it’s 

selected. If the text does not fit in a frame and there isn’t 

another box for it to go, it will show as a little red plus 

sign at the bottom right corner. Continue the text flow 

by clicking the red plus sign and then selecting another 

frame for it to go. 

REMEMBER: Never export a document to PDF while there 

is overset text. If you try to, InDesign will warn you before 

starting to export and will tell you the page/s on which it 

occurs. Cancel exporting and check the mentioned pages to 

make sure your document is not missing any vital information. 

Icon showing that text continues in another text frame 

A red + sign means there is overset text = bad 



Missing Font / Find Font... 

If you open a document and a pop-up window informs 

you that you are missing a font, this means that the 

document was created using one or more fonts that are 

not installed on your computer. These might be speciality 

fonts that someone has downloaded from the internet or 

simply another version of a generally used font, such as 

Times New Roman or Helvetica. 

Text Frame Options 

There are a number of things you can do to a text box 

should you wish to - for example add borders, have a 

coloured background, add columns or change the vertical 

justification. All of these things can be done by going to 

Object > Text Frame Options.... (Ctrl + B). For example, 

if you’re adding borders to your text frame for emphasis, 

remember to inset the text so that it sits comfortably inside 

the box and does not go right to the edge. 

Bulleted and numbered lists 

If you have a list that requires bullets or numbers, you 

can apply them by selecting the text and clicking on the 

bulleted or numbered list icons on the top of your screen 

under the paragraph formatting control panel. 

Paragraph formatting 

Bullets and numbers 

To rectify this go to Type > Find Font... then select the 

font that has a warning triangle next to it and replace it 

by choosing another font from the drop-down menu and 

pressing ‘Change All’. 

Tip: When placing image captions on top of images, 

keep them consistent by always aligning the text box with 

the image box and having inset spacing with a vertical 

justification set to ‘bottom’. 

Special Characters & Glyphs 

Special characters — an apparently underused InDesign 

feature — include things like date, page numbers and 

break characters. Special characters free you from 

having to insert this data by hand (or having to modify it 

by hand whenever significant changes are in order). Say 

you wanted your piece of text to start on a new column 

— instead of pressing ‘Return’ over and over again in 

order to get to the next column, go to Type > Insert Break 

Character > Column Break. 

With Glyphs (Type > Glyphs), you can explore all of the 

characters in a font, which is handy when looking for 

a particular symbol or working in a language that has 

accented characters. 

To add automatic page numbering to your document, 

create a box for your page number on the Master Page, insert 

any letter in the style you want the page numbers to appear, 

select the letter and go to Type > Insert Special Character > 

Markers > Current Page Number. The page numbering will 

now appear on every page you have applied that master to. 

Tip: You can turn the hidden characters (i.e. spaces, tabs 

returns, column brakes etc.) on by going to Type > Show 

Hidden Characters. Remember you will have to be on a 

‘Normal viewing mode’ in order to see them. This comes in 

handy if, when amending someone else’s old document, the 

text starts acting funny (odd line breaks etc.) and you don’t 

know why. By turning on the hidden characters you can see 

exactly which buttons the previous person pressed when 

creating the piece of text. 



Paragraph & Character Styles 

The ability to create custom paragraph and character styles 

is an excellent time-saving feature. This pane is visible in 

the work area by default if you’ve got ‘Typography’ as 

your main working mode, and if you’ve hidden it for some 

reason, you can bring it up by pressing Ctrl + F11. 

The templates have paragraph styles set up already, so 

all you need to do is to make sure you use them. There 

are different styles for headings, subheadings, body text, 

bullets etc. which can all be applied to a portion of text 

with just one click. Paragraph styles are separated from 

each other by pressing Return. 

Baseline grid 

Most of the templates’ paragraph styles are aligned to 

a baseline grid which all the text will stick to. To make it 

visible go to View > Grids and Guides > Show baseline 

Grid. These horizontal lines that run through the page 

can also be used to measure distance between frames 

and are there to help you to create a neat and structured 

document where everything aligns perfectly. 

Character styles work in a similar way, but they don’t have 

to be separated by pressing Return. This is very useful for 

highlighting words and phrases within a paragraph. 

Note: The above paragraph is set to ‘body’ -paragraph style 

and I’ve used an italic character style for the word ‘within’. 

If, when highlighting a piece of text, the paragraph style 

shows a + sign after it, it means the style has not been 

fully applied. This could happen if you’ve copied text 

from another document with a different text style or have 

adjusted the text manually by changing the kerning or size 

of the text for example. By right-clicking and selecting 

‘Apply “body”, Clear Overrides’ you can clear overrides 

and apply the style correctly to the whole paragraph. 

Should you wish to alter the paragraph or character 

styles, right-click on the style and choose ‘Edit “body”’ 

for example. This will bring up a ‘Paragraph Style 

Options’ -pane with tabs for all the different aspects of 

the style; basic character formats, indents and spacing, 

justification, character colour etc. which you can then 

adjust accordingly. 

If, for any reason, you decide you want to get rid of the 

baseline grid alignment you can do this by going to your 

Paragraph Style Options pane and selecting ‘None’. For 

example when placing annotations on top of an image or 

a diagram and the type needs to move more freely. 

If you want to create a new paragraph style from 

scratch, click on the small triangle on the top right 

corner of the paragraph styles pane and select 

‘New Parapragh Style...’. 



Working with Colour 

InDesign is set up exactly like Illustrator in terms of using 

colours. You have the option of working in either RGB or 

CMYK mode (remember to use CMYK if creating a document 

for print!) and you have the option of ‘Fill’ and ‘Stroke’ colours. 

The templates are already set up with the four AWW brand 

colours in the Swatches palette, but if you need to add to the 

selection there are several ways of doing so. 

Double clicking on the ‘Fill’ colour on your ‘Tools’ pane will 

bring up a ‘Colour Picker’ window where you can either click 

on the coloured square to pick a random colour or use the 

RGB or CMYK value fields to insert a specific colour. Once 

done, close that window, right-click on the ‘Fill’ colour on 

your ‘Tools’ pane and select ‘Add to Swatches’. 

If you have a ready-made colour palette as an ASE 

(Adobe Swatch Exchange) file, you can upload that by 

clicking on the top right corner of the Swatches palette 

and choosing ‘Load Swatches’. If you have another 

InDesign document with the colours you want, you can 

import them using this method. 

You can also select spot colors from existing libraries, such 

as Pantone’s. But keep this in mind: if the document will be 

printed in CMYK only, without using Pantone colors, then 

you’re better off converting the colors to CMYK so that you 

get an accurate preview of the result. Illustrator has a much 

wider selection of Colour Book libraries, so what you can do 

is select your colour palette in Illustrator, save it as an ASE 

file and import that into your InDesign document. 

Use The Right Black 

There seems to be some confusion about the use of rich 

black, which is made up of all CMYK colors (for example, 

40, 40, 30, 100). Rich black is excellent for large areas of 

black, such as logos and black backgrounds. It prevents 

fading (to a dull gray), which is especially useful for 

outdoor posters and flyers. 

However, body text should always be in process black 

(i.e. 100% K, which is the standard Black in the Swatches 

palette) to avoid printing problems. For the same reason, 

registration black (which is composed of 100% CMYK) 

should never be used for body text or thin lines. 

Tables 

When you need to insert a table into your document there 

are a couple of ways to do it. If it’s a fairly simple table, 

such as a fee proposal it’s probably best to create it from 

scratch, using the following steps: 

1. Using the Type tool, place the insertion point where 

you want the table to appear. 

2. Choose Table > Insert Table. 

3. Specify the numbers of rows and columns. 

4. If your table contents will continue on more than one 

column or frame, specify the number of header or footer 

rows in which you want the information to be repeated. 

5. Click OK. 

You will now have a table with identical column widths 

and a black stroke that is 1pt in weight. To make the table 

look more attractive and interesting you can, for example, 

change the colour of the strokes to white, change the 

weight of the stroke, add background colour to the cells, 

add alternating row fills to make it easier to read and 

change the column widths to reflect the amount of text 

inside. All of these things can be done in Table > Table 

Options > Table Setup.... 

Remeber to use a paragraph style that is not aligned to the 

baseline grid so that the text in each cell sits in the same 

position inside the cell and does not try to stick to the grid. 

This is how it will look at first: 

And here’s an altered version: 

Header 

1 facts more facts maybe numbers 

You can also use the ‘Place’ command to import a Word 

document that includes tables, or an Excel spreadsheet. 

The imported data then is an editable table. You can use 

the Import Options dialogue box to control the formatting. 



Find/Change 

Another extremely useful feature for text-heavy 

documents is Find/Change. This comes in handy when 

the need arises to replace all occurrences of a certain 

phrase or title in a document. You can find it under Edit > 

Find/Change or by pressing Ctrl + F. 

If it’s a phrase or title, this is fairly easy: type the original 

phrase and the new one, and hit ‘Change all’. 

If it’s something complex, such as a word that has to be 

changed only in titles, you can use the advanced options 

to isolate some distinguishing features. For example, if 

the titles are in a different font than the body text, you can 

use that. Use the font options in the ‘Find format’ box. 

You can even search for objects by using specific 

formatting options. For example, if all of your frames have 

a black stroke, and would like to remove the stroke, you 

can do so by selecting the appropriate options in the 

Object tab of the Find/Change box. 

Arrows and Pointers 

Sometimes you might need to add some arrows and 

pointers to a diagram or a drawing and the best tool to do 

those is the Pen tool. 

First click where you want your line to start. If it’s a straight 

horizontal or vertical line, press the shift key to keep it 

in line and click where you want the arrow to end. Bring 

up the Stroke menu and choose the type of stroke you 

need, (for example dashed, dotted or solid) its weight, 

(default stroke is 1pt in weight which can look a little heavy, 

especially in black) and any arrowheads or pointers you 

want at the start or the end of the stroke. You can also 

choose between a straight or a rounded cap. 

If your line has a curve/s, please don’t try to make it out 

of many straight lines that don’t connect at the corners. 

Use the Pen tool to draw the line and if you need to adjust 

the corners to make them appear smoother, go to Object 

> Corner Options... and adjust accordingly, or, if it’s just 

a single corner that you want to adjust, select it with the 

Direct Selection Tool (the white arrow) and go to Object > 

Convert Point... and choose the style you need. 

Convert Shape 

Should you ever need to create rectangles with round 

corners, triangles or polygons, just draw any shape and 

go to Object > Convert Shape... and choose the shape 

you need. Simples. 

Hyperlinks 

You can create hyperlinks so that when you export to 

Adobe PDF or SWF in InDesign, a viewer can click a link 

to jump to other locations in the same document, to email 

address, or to websites. You can find the Hyperlinks pane 

under Window > Interactive > Hyperlinks. 

A source is hyperlinked text, a hyperlinked text frame, or a 

hyperlinked graphics frame. A destination is the URL, file, 

email address, page text anchor, or shared destination to 

which a hyperlink jumps. A source can jump to only one 

destination, but any number of sources can jump to the 

same destination. To create a hyperlink, select the source 

for the link, click on the fly-out menu at the top right 

corner of the ‘Hyperlinks’ pane, select ‘New Hyperlink’ 

and choose the type of link you need. 

REMEMBER: To make hyperlinks active, remember to tick the 

‘Hyperlinks’ box when exporting to PDF. 



Exporting to PDF 

Finally, when the document is ready, export it to PDF first. 

In theory you can print straight from InDesign, but I find 

there’s usually always some hitch or another which makes 

the pages print off centre or twice the size etc. So best 

practice really is to export to a PDF version first and then 

print from Acrobat Reader. (For some reason the AWW 

printers print better from Acrobat Reader than Acrobat 

Professional.) 

When exporting, you’ll need to decide first whether you 

want to print the document, is it for viewing on screen 

or emailing, as there are different ways of exporting for 

each purpose. As rule of thumb, always choose the ‘Print’ 

version of exporting rather than ‘Interactive’. 

Viewing in Acrobat 

If you have a double sided document which is going 

to be viewed on screen, you might want the recipient 

to view it as spreads rather than single pages. You 

can set this up by going to File > Properties and in the 

‘Initial View’ -tab, select ‘Two-Up Continuous (Cover 

Page)’, set the magnification to ‘Fit Page’ and hit Save. 

Next time you open the document it will open up as a 

double sided brochure. 

In the next pane, you can determine whether you want to 

export as ‘Smallest File Size’, ‘High Quality Print’ or 

‘Press Quality’. 

• ‘Smallest File Size’ will give you the smallest file so if 

you’re emailing the PDF this is the best option. 

• ‘High Quality Print’ is meant for desktop/in-house 

printing devices, such as our First and Second colour 

printers. 

• ‘Press Quality’ will give you the largest file size 

and should only be used if sending the PDF to a 

professional printer. Remember to include crop marks 

and use Document Bleed Settings! 

Should you want the recipient to view the PDF as a slide 

show as soon as they open it, choose the ‘Interactive’ 

version of exporting. In the pop-up window tick the box 

that says ‘Open in Full Screen Mode’ and leave the JPEG 

quality ‘High’ with 144ppi.

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