Style multiple paragraphs at the same time with Next Styles…
WARNING - If you haven’t heard of or seen “Next Styles” in action you may want to consider watching the video tutorial below before you read this post.
Once you have created your styles, InDesign paragraph styles allow us the ability to style our text quickly and easily by setting up a next style. Put simply, a next style is a rule that you give a paragraph style telling it what should happen when you close a paragraph and start a new one. In our previous document we set three paragraph styles (header, sub header and body). Now we have these set, all we need to do is go into our “style options” dialogue and tell our styles what should happen to the next paragraph when we press return/enter.
Before we get started there’s a few things we need to consider so we don’t muck up our existing text. As a rule when editing styles it’s best to make sure you have no text frames selected, and also that your text cursor isn’t active within a text frame. These two scenarios are the number one reason people get frustrated with paragraph styles, so be careful.
Now that we don’t have a text frame selected, and our type cursor isn’t active within our text, go to the paragraph styles panel and locate the first style which you want to be applied to your paragraph. In our case it is our “Header” style. Now double click on the “Header” style and the “Style Options” dialogue will appear. You should be looking at the “General” tab by default, in the middle of this dialogue you’ll see a “Next Style” drop down menu. This is where we tell the “Header” style to follow with our “Sub Header” style, so choose “Sub Header” from the drop down menu. Now choose “OK” to close the “Style Options” dialogue.
Now we need to tell InDesign what to do after our “Sub Header” paragraph. We simply repeat the first step again, though this time we will choose “Body” as our next style. Double click on the “Sub Header” style in the paragraph styles panel, when the “Style Options” dialogue appears choose “Body” from the next style drop down menu. Now choose “OK” to close the “Style Options” dialogue.
We’re almost there! Repeating the last step again, this time we’ll open the “Style Options” dialogue for our “Body” paragraph style, and this is where we need to make a serious decision. Do we want our text to repeat the loop again, or do we want every paragraph style from this point on to maintain our current “Body” paragraph style?
If you wanting to keep the current “Body” style active, do the following. From the next style drop down choose “Same Style”. Now every new paragraph you create will have the “Body” style applied. Choose “OK” to close the “Style Options” dialogue.
However, if you’re wanting to loop back again so the following paragraphs start from “Header” then “Sub Header” and “Body”, you simply choose “Header” as your next style. Once done choose “OK” to close the “Style Options” dialogue. So now every fourth paragraph will be the beginning of a new loop.
Now it’s time to put our next styles in action. There are two main ways you can get Next Styles to work for you. You can have your styles apply as you type (Option 1) or you can have them apply to your text when you’re done (Option 2).
Option 1: To apply your styles as you type, create a new text frame, then choose the “Header” style from the paragraph styles panel. This step is very important, if your “Header” style is highlighted blue in the paragraph styles panel, you’re on track. Start typing your header text. When done, press return/enter. You have now created a new paragraph, and you’ll notice that the sub header style is now active within the paragraph styles panel and is being applied to your sub header text, when you type in your sub header text it will already be formatted correctly. When done, press return again. Now the body style is active, type in your body text and you should have three different paragraphs each formatted accordingly. If you press return/enter now you will either loop back to the header style or continue typing with the same style depending on the option you chose from the next style drop down in the style options dialogue.
Option 2: To apply your next styles to existing text, you have three options.
1. Apply next styles to all paragraphs within the selected frame - Select your existing text frame, with the “Selection” tool, then from the paragraph styles panel “right click” (two button mouse) or “control click” one button mouse and choose “Apply Header then Next Style”.
2. Apply next styles only to the selected text within the frame - Select some or all of the text within your frame and from the paragraph styles panel “right click” (two button mouse) or “control click” one button mouse and choose “Apply Header then Next Style”. If you selected three paragraphs, only those three will be styled, if you chose all the paragraphs within the frame, all paragraphs will be styled.
Take advantage of Next Styles where you can. They may not work in every situation, but when they do they’re priceless. Click here to access Adobe Help for more info on nested styles.
[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]
To achieve the result above, create a paragraph style of some text and call it “Body”, then open the style options dialogue for that style. There are a few ways to open the style options dialogue, you can right click (two button mouse) or control click (one button mouse) on the “Body” style, you can even double click on the style name within the paragraph styles panel which will also open the style options dialogue.
