Wednesday, June 13, 2007

InDesign "Import Options" shortcut

If you check the Show Import Options choice in the Place dialog box when you are importing text or graphics into your layout, you will be see some options before the file is placed. If you are placing a Word file, the dialog box will let you choose how much formatting to import with the text, whether or not you want to convert quotes to typographer's quotes and how to map paragraph styles. If you are placing a PDF file, you can choose which pages of the PDF to place.

The trouble is, once you check this box, you will see the options dialog box every time you place text or graphics files, until you deselect the box.

The solution? Just leave the Show Import Options choice deselected, and hold down the shift key while you click the Open button when you want to see the Import Options dialog box. This will affect only the current graphic or text file you have selected. The next time you place a file, the Import Options dialog box will not appear, unless you hold down the shift key again.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you, great tip :)

George Coghill said...

Excellent tip, just what I was looking for!

Anonymous said...

Really helpful. Thank you.

Anonymous said...

Can i somehow import .cdr file in indesign, where everything is editable. Thank you very much.

Keith Gilbert said...

I don't know of any way to bring native .cdr files into InDesign, sorry.

Unknown said...

Hi

I need to copy and paste text from pdf format into InDesign on a regular basis, but find that from some pdf's once imported into InDesign I loose all formatting (font, size, superscript, etc.).

Is there a way around this? I've tried saving those pdf's as RTF files and then importing, but same story...at my wits end!!
Chantelle

Keith Gilbert said...

@Chantelle: You could try PDF2ID from www.recosoft.com to convert the PDFs to ID format, and then copy and paste from the resulting ID file into your target ID layout.

CFunk said...

I don't see any options in my place images dialogue box. I'm on a mac running yosemite.

Keith Gilbert said...

@CFunk, what kind of images are you placing (PNG, JPEG, TIF, etc.?)

dcmurray said...

Is it possible to modify import options for a file that is already placed in the InDesign document? I often need to adjust the cell ranges for placed excel tables but find myself replacing the tables to do so...