Synchronizing styles in InDesign’s Book feature

It’s easy to synchronize your paragraph and character styles using InDesign’s Book feature (done after the documents are added to your Book panel). We’ll explain how to do that, and also how to transfer styles from one document to another (this method can be used before the documents are added to your Book panel).

Synchronizing styles using InDesign’s Book feature

If you create a new paragraph or character style in any chapter, that style can be added to some or all of the other chapters in your Book panel quickly and easily.

Synchronizing ALL styles throughout the book

Suppose you’re typesetting chapter 3 and you create a new paragraph style. You can easily add that new style to all the other chapters in your book. Here’s how:

In your Book panel (see pic), the left column is called Style Source. One of those boxes (usually the one at the top by default) has an icon in it, and that “Indicates the Style Source” (if you hover your mouse over it, that’s what it says). All the other empty boxes in that column say “Set the Style Source.”

Let’s say you want to update all the chapters with the paragraph and character styles of Chapter 3. Click in the Set the Style Source box next to Chapter 3 (that little icon will move to this box), then click the Synchronize Styles and Swatches icon at the bottom left. It may take a while, depending on how many styles and chapters you have, but this will make all the chapters have the same styles as Chapter 3.

You may get a message that reads “Synchronization will cause some text in filename.indd to become overset.” If so, make a note of that chapter, then click OK to continue. You’ll want to check every chapter very carefully to make sure that all the text is displaying as expected.

Choosing what to synchronize

Talk about choices! Click on the Book panel’s fly-out menu and choose Synchronize Options. You’ll see all the choices shown in the Synchronize Options dialog box (shown here), and can choose any that you’d like to synchronize. It’s a good idea to synchronize swatches with your paragraph and character styles if the latter include colors for the text, paragraph rules, etc.

Choose all the options you want, then click Synchronize.

Synchronizing only selected documents in the book

It’s very handy to be able to choose which documents to synchronize in the Book panel. In Book Design Made Simple, our front and back matter documents have completely different styles from our chapter documents. We didn’t want the numerous styles for the Contents, Index, Glossary and so on to be cluttering up our chapters, and vice versa. So selective synchronizing worked well for us. (Plus, to check 500 pages for reflowed and overset text every time we added a new paragraph or character style would’ve been too time consuming and potentially introduced new errors!)

In this example, the Style Source is set to Chapter 3, and two other documents have been selected (they are highlighted in blue).

Suppose you’ve created a new paragraph style in chapter 3, but you only want to synchronize the chapter 3 styles with two other chapters and not the whole book. Here’s what to do:

Click in the Set the Style Source box next to Chapter 3. Then select the documents you want to synchronize the Chapter 3 styles with:

• select a number of documents in a row by clicking on the first one, holding down the Shift key, and then clicking on the last one
• select individual documents by holding the Ctrl/Cmd key and clicking on  different documents
• to deselect all the documents, click in the gray area below all the documents.

Then click the Synchronize Styles and Swatches icon at the bottom left and watch the magic happen! InDesign will open each of the selected documents to synchronize the styles, and you’ll see the “open book” icon to the right of each selected document.

Use a template as a control for styles

Another way to keep a handle on your styles is to create a standard document for your book and save it as a template. (We offer a premade book template containing a set of styles.) Create each new document for your book based on that template. When you combine all your documents into the Book panel, add a blank document made from the template at the end of the book. Set the template as your Style Source (see above), and then synchronize its styles across all the documents in your Book panel. When your book is ready for publication, simply delete the template from the Book panel.

Transferring styles from one InDesign document to another

Suppose you haven’t yet compiled all your documents into the Book panel. Being able to transfer styles between documents outside of the Book feature can save you a lot of work! Use the method described below to transfer paragraph and/or character styles to another document. Paragraph styles are used as an example, but the steps are the same for both.

1. Open the document you want to transfer paragraph styles into. Go to the Paragraph Styles fly-out menu and choose Load Paragraph Styles (or Load All Text Styles if you want to transfer character styles at the same time). In the dialog box, find the document you want to get the styles from, and click Open.
2. You’ll see a dialog box like the one shown here.
   

   If you choose Load All Text Styles, you’ll see both paragraph styles (¶) and character styles (A) in the same list.

3. If you want to import all the styles, click on the Check All button. If you only want to select a few styles, click the Uncheck All button, then choose the individual styles you want. If you need a reminder of the settings for any particular style, look at the Incoming Style Definition area, where the settings are described. Then click OK.
4. The styles you want will now appear among your new document’s paragraph and/or character styles.

You’ll discover a conflict in style names if you’ve named your styles the same in both documents. You could rename your styles in one of the documents, or you could use one of the methods described below to deal with this situation:

• To replace the existing style with the new one If there’s a conflict, your Load Styles dialog box will look something like the one above. When you highlight the style that has a conflict, you’ll be presented with a menu of choices in the Conflict with Existing Style column. Both style definitions are shown so that you can figure out whether or not to overwrite the existing style with the new style. If you decide to do so, choose Use Incoming Style Definition. Your existing style will disappear.
• To keep both styles Highlight the style with the conflict, and choose Auto-Rename in the Conflict with Existing Style column. This will simply import the new style and add “copy” to the end of the style name. You can decide later which style you want to keep, or you can rename or repurpose one of the styles.

Which method of style synchronization is best?

The Book feature has some very handy qualities and we use it a lot! Now that you know two different methods of syncing styles (before and while using the Book feature), choose whichever one suits you the best.

Read more: Using the Book feature in InDesign » the basics of getting started with the Book feature
And more: InDesign Book feature: the good, the bad, and the ugly » the best and worst of the Book feature
Lastly: InDesign book template by Book Design Made Simple » a companion template to our book

Book Design Made Simple. You can do it yourself.