woodwing

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you are using an InDesign library both as a regular library as well as a Smart Style library?

For example: say you have created a table and saved it to an InDesign library. When working on a document, you want to sometimes just place that table as an object on the layout, and in other places apply the formatting to already existing tables.

In order to achieve this, the functionality of the library needs to be changed between an InDesign Object library and a Smart Style library by choosing the appropriate command from the library menu. This is done by opening the library menu, scrolling down to the relevant command and clicking on that command. In order to change the functionality of the library once more, this whole process needs to be repeated. When having to do this several times, this becomes very time consuming and therefore inefficient.

Here's the tip:

1. Create a library with all objects that it should contain, save it locally using a file name such as "Library Objects".
2. Go into the library menu and make sure that it is set to "Object Library".
3. Create a copy of the saved object library, name it "Styles Library" and open it in InDesign.
4. Make sure this library is set to "Smart Style Library".
5. Show both libraries at the same time.

When you now need to place an item from the Library, simply use the "Object Library"; when you need to apply the formatting of an object, simply use the "Styles Library"!

Above: drag the Smart Styles styling from the library onto an existing object to completely style it in one go.

Below: drag an Object from the library onto the page to simply place it as available in the library.