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siwybiwy
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Redefining styles in another way

Apr 12, 2012 8:47 AM

A friend of mine just asked me a very interesting question. If you had some text that you manually styled (ie not a style yet), and you had Heading 1 in your styles palette already, can you select the new manually styled text and say that it is NOW Heading 1 with the new attributes? Meaning Heading 1's style gets replaced with whatever the style of my manually styled text is.

 

Thank you in advance for your help.

 

We're both using InDesign CS4.

773 Views   14 Replies   Latest reply: siwybiwy, Apr 12, 2012 1:37 PM
 
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  • Rik Ramsay
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    1. Rik Ramsay,
    Apr 12, 2012 10:12 AM   in reply to siwybiwy
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    If you originally had the text styled as Heading 1 but you modified it in any way, you can simply use the panel dropdown and select "redefine style".

     

    However, if you started from scratch and so the type is in "[Basic Paragraph]", you would need to create a new style, call it heading 2 then delete heading 1 and replace with heading 2. You can then rename the style if you wanted.

     
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  • Grant H
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    2. Grant H,
    Apr 12, 2012 10:41 AM   in reply to siwybiwy
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    or copy a few letters of the "different style"  paste into text with the Heading 1 style, and redefine style. Delete pasted text.

     

    G

     
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  • siwybiwy
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    3. siwybiwy,
    Apr 12, 2012 12:20 PM   in reply to Rik Ramsay
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    Rik, thank you for your reply, but I was looking for a shorter solution. Thanks for your time.

     
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  • siwybiwy
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    4. siwybiwy,
    Apr 12, 2012 12:22 PM   in reply to Grant H
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    This si quite a good idea, and I guess the best possible solution. I just wish we could just apply anything as the new "whatever". That would be great. Thank you for your reply.

     
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  • siwybiwy
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    5. siwybiwy,
    Apr 12, 2012 12:31 PM   in reply to Grant H
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    You know, thinking about it, your solution actually forces me to style some text with Heading first, which also takes time, so I don't know, maybe a script can do some magic.

     
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  • Rik Ramsay
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    6. Rik Ramsay,
    Apr 12, 2012 12:47 PM   in reply to siwybiwy
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    siwybiwy wrote:

    ...but I was looking for a shorter solution.

     

    ...forces me to style some text with Heading first, which also takes time

     

    I don't understand why you think a script will help in this case. All the solutions above can be done with only a few clicks of the mouse and are extremely efficient. It might just force you to reconsider how you work in the future.

     
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  • Grant H
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    7. Grant H,
    Apr 12, 2012 12:52 PM   in reply to siwybiwy
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    actually the best way to do this: more ellegant: is...

     

    Create a new style with the manually styled text. Call it for eg: Heading New.

     

    With nothing selected click the Heading 1 style in the styles panel. Click delete, a dialogue box will pop up and then select replace with Heading New.

     

    G

     
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  • siwybiwy
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    8. siwybiwy,
    Apr 12, 2012 1:03 PM   in reply to Rik Ramsay
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    But I'm looking for one click... It was just a theoretical question really, we don't really work like that. We do proper styles, but my friend's thinking is right, we should have a simple command that fixes this "problem".

     
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  • siwybiwy
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    9. siwybiwy,
    Apr 12, 2012 1:05 PM   in reply to Grant H
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    Again, good idea, but it's too much work, I need something as easy as Redefine Style. Thanks for your post.

     
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  • lilia@
    196 posts
    Jan 31, 2012
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    10. lilia@,
    Apr 12, 2012 1:07 PM   in reply to siwybiwy
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    Find/Change > Find what: local formatting / Change to: Heading 1 paragraph style

     
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  • siwybiwy
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    11. siwybiwy,
    Apr 12, 2012 1:12 PM   in reply to lilia@
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    Another good idea, but I don't want that, I want to click into some text and say this is now the style for Heading 1. I hope I'm not angering anyone with my "attitude".

     
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  • lilia@
    196 posts
    Jan 31, 2012
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    12. lilia@,
    Apr 12, 2012 1:16 PM   in reply to siwybiwy
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    lol... no anger here,,, It's a great idea but can't be done as everyone has said... unless you use a script. But I think Grants ideas were great.

     
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  • Joel Cherney
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    13. Joel Cherney,
    Apr 12, 2012 1:21 PM   in reply to siwybiwy
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    Basically, everyone is making multi-step suggestions that could be, as lilia observes, reproduced in a one-click script. There is no one-step way to achieve what you're asking about in InDesign.

     

    (I run through one of these multi-step style redefinitions hundreds of times a day, but I do it fast enough on the keyboard alone that wrapping these steps up into a scripe would not get me any advantage in terms of speed. Any benefit from wrapping these steps up into a script would be eaten up by the step "remove hands from keyboard, grope for mouse, open Script panel, click on script.")

     
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  • siwybiwy
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    14. siwybiwy,
    Apr 12, 2012 1:37 PM   in reply to Joel Cherney
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    I'm thinking of a control-click on some text, selecting a command like Redefine Style To This Text, and then select the style. Boom!

     
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