Indianapolis InDesign User Group

Meeting Notes Archive

January 29, 2008

Jim Cooper was on hand at our last meeting to discuss the benefits of InCopy and a typical InCopy workflow. He began by showing us the importance of setting up presentable and functional style sheets in InDesign that help take some of the workload off of designers and put it back on the copy writers and editors. His discussion of style sheets included showing us how to use nested style sheets and the “Next Style” function. Another tip that drew the oohs and ahhs from the audience was the ability of InDesign to share style sheets between documents as long as the style sheets used the same naming system.

After our discussion of InDesign and style sheets, we moved on to InCopy and the InCopy workflow. Jim began by showing us the “check in/check out” function that allows different users to make edits to the same document. A couple of the nice functions of InCopy are the ability to track the changes made to the document based on who made them and the ability to approve or reject those changes where needed. The remote capability of the InCopy-InDesign workflow is also a nice feature. This allows the designer to package a file for InCopy, which allows a user to take the files home to edit, and return the files for InDesign when completed. This is also a nice feature if your company has a slow network connection.

Jim also showed us how InCopy might be helpful when working with our “InDesign-impaired” bosses. Using InDesign and InCopy, you can create templates for commonly used documents that allow the user to edit only the areas you want them to.

Jim’s presentation of his “Styling and Filing” InCopy workflow was both enjoyable and informative. Hopefully we will be able to complete our projects more efficiently using the techniques and tips discussed at this meeting. 

About our presenter

Jim Cooper, VP, Print Implementations, Apsiva Catalog Solutions (www.apsiva.com), presents regularly on multi-channel publication solutions. He also serves as the Chapter Representative of the Reno, Nevada, InDesign User Group. To get in touch, e-mail: info@apsiva.com.

Debbie Conway
Indianapolis IDUG Chapter Representative

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