Episode 12: Nested Style Sheets, Part 2 (VIDEO)
Picking up right where Part 1 left off, this second installment on Nested Style Sheets shows how you can build in additional instructions to your paragraph styles, allowing you to apply multiple style sheets to multiple paragraphs in a specific order with a single click.
Watch the episode here (7:56 | 17MB), or you can subscribe via iTunes.
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February 1st, 2008 at 8:48 am
Have I lost my mind? In CS3, the right-click Paragraph Styles context menu in my installation does not have “apply ____ style, then apply next style” in it. I know I used to have that function before the upgrade this year.
Did it move somewhere else that I haven’t been able to find it? Does anyone else have this issue? Cannot find anything on Adobe forum. Adobe online help shows screenshot of exactly what’s to happen, but it’s not there…
–romy
February 1st, 2008 at 10:06 am
Romy —
You haven’t lost your mind, but I suspect you may have missed something. For that option to show up, you must have more than one paragraph selected. If your cursor is just sitting in one line, or you only have a single paragraph (or portion of it) selected, InDesign does not display the “…then next Style” option as it does not see any next paragraph in your selection.
The other thing that might cause the menu to not be there is that the first paragraph style in your selection does not have a “Next Style” designated in its style definition. I think if you double-check that both of those conditions are met, you’ll see the “Apply [yourstylename], Then Next Style” option again.
February 1st, 2008 at 2:50 pm
Went back and double-checked. Style sheets were loaded from diff doc. You were right: did not have “next” defined on first of series meant to cascade (in other doc). On load, naming confusion caused “use incoming” to replace intended one. Ta-dah!!
BTW — really appreciate your tip about PASTING character into final field of nested setup. I had style I wanted to turn off at hair space. I copied the code character (found in find & change special characters list) and pasted it into the “through what” field. Could not see anything there, but it worked flawlessly.
–romy
April 8th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
Hi there,
I made bullets following your nesting example, but it isn’t working. Ok, so I want to put bullet points at the start of 3 paragraphs. The problem is that it puts a bullet at the start of the 1st line of the 1st paragraph, and the rest of the text disappears, because the text box isn’t wide enough for the text to all fit on one line and for some reason it isn’t wrapping down to the second line like I’d like it to. Any ideas? Does that make any sense?
-Malia
April 8th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
Never mind! I found I had a box called “no break” checked. I had no idea what it did, but now I do 🙂 Thanks!
July 6th, 2010 at 8:59 pm
I need help with nested styles. Does InDesign let you do if .. then in nested styles? For example I am doing a directory of products. Each product category has a 2 digit followed by the topic heading. Under the major categories are subcategories. These have a 6 to 8 digit number followed by a subcategory. Under the subcategories are companies listed in bold. Sometimes there are two or three companies listed. Other times 12.
The next style could be the 2 digit category or the 6 go 8 digit category. I need to be able to have an “if” “then” nested style so that several pages of products can be formatted.
July 6th, 2010 at 9:13 pm
There’s no “if/then” aspect to nested styles. You might be able to solve your problem with GREP Styles (CS4 and later) by building expressions into your styles that account for the variations in the length of digits in the category. And, unfortunately, the Next Style settings are absolute. InDesign does not take conditions into account when applying the next style. It’s only the one style you designate.