Apr. 7, 2009
What is an override? How do you redefine? Put simply, think of an override as the bad guy and redefine as the good guy…
An override is the name for any style that has different formatting attributes applied when compared to its default style. So far we have been working with three paragraph styles (Header, Sub Head and Body) and one character style (Number). Let’s say I closed the document down, and then someone else opened that same document and started changing the header text within from blue to green. Let’s also assume that that person didn’t know what a style was. When done, happy with themselves for doing the changes oh so quickly (Ha!), they shut down the file with no regard to how reckless they’ve been. So next time you open the file your suspicious of the documents new appearance and you’re ready to investigate.
Simply place your text cursor within the paragraph style which you want to check, open the Paragraph Styles panel and you will see your highlighted paragraph style (in blue). However, now you also see a little plus (+) symbol. What’s the deal, you say? Well, that little plus symbol is your indicator from InDesign that someone has tinkered with your style. The plus symbol simply means the style has an override applied, or in other words, that someone has changed the default style colour, which was blue, to green.
You have a few options at this point; you can remove the override, or redefine the style. Removing an override is like using undo. Once you remove that override, the text reverts back to its original style state. To remove an override, place your cursor within the affected paragraph, and from the Paragraph Styles panel click on the clear overrides icon located at the bottom of the panel. A quicker way to remove an override is to hold down “Option” (MAC) or “ALT” (PC) and click on the relevant styles name. Both ways will remove the little plus symbol and revert the text back to its original state (blue).
Now if you didn’t want to remove the override, and you wanted to permanently change the header text to green, you wouldn’t clear the override. Instead, you’d redefine the style. Redefining a style affects every single paragraph of text within your document that that header style has been applied to (something to keep in mind). To redefine this style now, insert your type cursor within the relevant paragraph, and from the Paragraph Styles panel open the flyout menu located at the top right of the panel and choose “Redefine Style”. Now the override disappears, and your style has been permanently changed throughout the document to have green as the default character colour.
[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]
3 Responses to “Paragraph Style Overrides and Redefine”
Every time I use the override function the text does not assume the new paragraph styles. Every time I select text and then select a paragraph style, the font turns into Wingdings. There’s no plus sign next to the paragraph style. When I open the style it is the correct font, but it applies Wingdings. please Help.
By Allen on Oct 19, 2009
I figured it out. Thanks.
By Allen on Oct 19, 2009
Can anyone out there tell me if I can append styles from quark into indesign4, I just began redoing my quark templates in indesign4 and can’t figure out how to import my quark styles without recreating all of them, basically I have some xtg tables that follow styles accordingly but I just don’t want to recreate every single one. can anyone help? Post it here as quarkindesign4 issues and I’ll pop in every day to check, thankyou in advance to all of you.
By Juco on May 12, 2010