TIP: Two Ways To Hide
In InDesign CS5, you can hide individual objects on the page by using the Layers panel or by pressing Cmd/Ctrl-3.
- from James Fritz on Twitter, @jamesfritz

TIP: Use Custom Dictionaries for Spell Check
Sometimes you want InDesign's spell check to go beyond the default dictionary. To add a list of custom words to the program's dictionary, take the following steps:
1. Build a custom dictionary by choosing Preferences > Dictionary and clicking the New User Dictionary icon. Name and place the dictionary.
2. Create a text file with your list of words and save it as an unformatted .txt file.
3. Go to Edit > Spelling > User Dictionary. Use the Target pop-up menu to choose the dictionary you created in step 1. Click the Import button and select the text file you saved in step 2. As long as the custom dictionary is chosen in the Preferences, InDesign won't flag those words as misspelled.
- Sandee Cohen

TIP: Banish Form Alerts from PDFs
Once an interactive PDF contains more than 100 buttons, Acrobat displays a form helper banner even when there is no form. This is apt to confuse people viewing the PDF. To prevent Acrobat from interpreting buttons as a form, choose File > Export, name the file, and choose Interactive PDF. In the Export to Interactive PDF dialog box, click the Security button. Check the option to "Use a password to restrict editing, printing and other tasks" and then input the password you want to control the setting. In the Changes Allowed menu, choose either "None" or "Inserting, deleting and rotating page."
- Sandee Cohen

TIP: Control Leading
Here's how to change InDesign's default value for automatic leading: Close all open documents, then open Paragraph from the Type menu and choose Justification from the Paragraph palette menu. Reset the Auto Leading value (I like 100%) and click OK. To change the default leading to a specific value, once again start with no documents open. Hit T to select the Type tool. In the Control bar, click the Character symbol at the far left to display the character-formatting options. In the Leading field, pick or type a value of your choice.
- James Felici

TIP: Hanging Punctuation
You can hang an opening quote mark using the Indent to Here character: Cmd+\ (Ctrl+\). This special character indents all subsequent lines in the paragraph to the point where you add the character, fixing the optical hole on the left edge of the text. It's especially useful for pull quotes and callouts that begin with a quote mark.
- Nigel French

TIP: The Best Video Format 
InDesign CS5 and 5.5 can handle many video formats: .mov, .avi, .mpeg, .flv, .f4v .mp4, and .m4v. But for optimum compatibility with the greatest assortment of viewing devices, I recommend the H.264-encoded video formats; that is, .mp4 and .m4v.
- Steve Werner

TIP: Get Smarter about Spot Colors
Are you working with spot colors? Turn on Overprint Preview (View > Overprint Preview) and keep it on so that what you see onscreen will be closer to what you get from your printer.
- David Blatner

TIP: Make "Cutting Corners" a Good Thing
Paper that has been cut into an unusual shape with a metal die is certainly an attention getter, but it's also beyond many budgets. To achieve the effect without the cost, try a simple guillotine trim, which just slices off an edge of the page. In the example below by Design Ranch in Kansas City, MO, the upper right and lower left corners of a four-panel accordion were cut at angles. 

- Trish Witkowski

TIP: More Elegant Alignment
Punctuation at the margin of a text frame can make the left or right sides of a column appear misaligned. Fix that by turning on InDesign's Optical Margin Alignment: Select the story, choose Story from the Type menu, and check the Optical Margin Alignment box in the Story panel.
To turn off optical margin alignment for certain types of paragraphs (bullets and numbered lists, for example), choose the Ignore Optical Margin Alignment option in your Paragraph Style Options.
- Nigel French

TIP: Articles That Don't Export
In InDesign CS 5.5, the new Articles Panel is a great new way to control the order of your content when exporting to ePub. But what if you have elements on your page that you want in the Articles panel, but don't want to be included in the ePub? One option is to click on the "Create New Article" button at the bottom of the panel; give it a name; and then make sure to deselect the "Include Article" checkbox. Any elements that you add to this particular Article will effectively be ignored when exporting to ePub.
- Ron Bilodeau

TIP: Reveal Overset Text 
You can see by the red plus sign on the right side of your text box that it contains overset text. To reveal the hidden text, type Command-Option-c/Control-Alt-c. The box will grow to just the right size.
- Michael Ninness

TIP: Banish Extra Rows When Converting Text to Tables
When you convert tabbed text to a table in InDesign, is there sometimes an extra row at the bottom of the table? If so, it's because you selected the pilcrow (paragraph symbol) at the end of the line. To avoid that, simply don't select the paragraph symbol at the end of the last line of type.

- Sandee Cohen

TIP: Preview Your Folio 
After creating an interactive document with InDesign CS5.5's Overlay Creator, test it before you download it onto your tablet. To test your open document, choose File > Folio Preview. Or, to preview the entire folio, click on the preview link at the bottom of the Folio Builder Panel after you selecting your folio.

- James Fritz

Create an Adhesive Tape Effect with Hard Light
One of my favorite transparency blending modes for creating realistic effects is Hard Light. It gives you a greater range of tones than you can get with Overlay or Soft Light, and it�™s less prone to blowing out highlights or plugging shadows like Color Dodge and Color Burn will. One fun trick you can do with Hard Light is to simulate adhesive tape. Start with a rectangle in the shape of a strip of tape. Fill it with 20% black in the Swatches panel and set it to Hard Light in the Effects panel. You might need to reduce the opacity a bit, too. Now give it a very small drop shadow directly behind (with a Distance of zero or one) and voila: tape!

- Mike Rankin

Let InDesign's Help Help You
Once you start looking, you'll find InDesign's subtle "help" prompts everywhere. For example, when you hover over the yellow Live Corner diamonds in the corners of a frame, InDesign displays a tool tip that reads, "Drag to set corner size. Opt-click to change shape. (Press Shift to change one corner.)" Similarly, hovering over the icons at the bottom of the Links panel displays all kinds of useful information, such as how many missing links, how many unique links, keyboard shortcuts, and more. Certain panels�”such as the Data Merge panel, the Object States panel, and the Articles panel (the last one is new in InDesign CS5.5)�”will under certain conditions offer helpful hints right on the face of the panel. The ultimate helper, of course, is the Tool Hints panel (Window > Utilities > Tool Hints).

- Keith Gilbert

TIP: Lines with Strokes
You've turned a line into an arrow using InDesign's Strokes panel. But perhaps you can't see the arrow clearly over a dark background, so you want to add a small white outline. Unfortunately, you can't add two stroke colors to one object in InDesign. So cheat a little and add an Outer Glow effect instead! This creates the appearance of a dual stroke. You'll probably want to set the blending mode to Normal and Opacity to 100%. To remove the fuzzy edge on the glow, change the Spread value to 100%.

- Cari Jansen

TIP: Use a Custom Dictionary
A custom dictionary is a great way to ensure consistent spelling of technical jargon for specific projects. To create a custom dictionary, choose Preferences > Dictionary, and click on the New User Dictionary icon. Give the dictionary a name, and store it anywhere you'd like. When you want to add a selected word to the custom dictionary, choose Edit > Spelling > Dictionary. Then, be sure to change the Target pop-up menu from the default "User Dictionary" to your custom user dictionary before adding your word. Be careful: If you add several words throughout a work session, and then InDesign crashes, you'll lose all the words you've added in that session, even if you've been saving your InDesign file along the way. Curiously, InDesign doesn't actually write the words you've added to the custom user dictionary file until you quit InDesign. So save and quit every so often!

- Keith Gilbert

TIP: Two Ways to Handle CSS
When exporting your InDesign composition to HTML for the Web (File > Export, then set Format to HTML), InDesign CS5.5 creates a list of CSS styles that appears in the Head section of the HTML file with style declarations (attributes). If the Include Style Definitions checkbox is selected in the Advanced area of the HTML Export dialog, InDesign will actually attempt to match the attributes of the InDesign text formatting with CSS equivalents! However, if this option is deselected, the HTML file includes empty declarations that can later be customized with a CSS editor like Dreamweaver CS5.5.

- Jerry Silverman

TIP: Scale Frame and Content to Specific Measurement Value 
Say you have a frame that is five inches wide, and you want to scale it and the picture inside the frame down to three inches wide. You probably know you can change the width and height of any selected object to any specific value by entering the desired measurement into the Width and Height fields in the Control panel. However, that only changes the width and height of the selected frame, or the selected image within a frame�”not both at the same time. If you use the Scale X and/or Scale Y fields in the Control panel, you do scale both the frame and its image simultaneously, but you have to do the math because the Scale X and Scale Y fields use percentages by default. Don�™t want to do the math? You don�™t have to. Simply enter �‘ in” into the Scale X field.

- Michael Ninness

TIP: View a Story in Multiple Windows 
InDesign lets you view one document in multiple windows. When working on a long, text-heavy document, it can difficult to judge the effect of text changes on pages that appear later in the document. For example, in a book or multiple-page article, you may want to adjust the text early in the story to shorten the story by a few lines. By viewing the document in two separate windows, you can adjust the text in one window and use a second window to see the effect your text changes are having at the end of the story. To get a second window, choose Window > Arrange > New Window.

- Jay Nelson

TIP: Add One Color Swatch from Another File 
You can add colors from another file to the Swatches panel by choosing Load Swatches on the panel�™s flyout menu. But what if you want to add just one color? Choose New Color Swatch. Under the Color Mode menu, choose Other Library, then select the file containing the colors you want to add. The colors from the file will show up as individual swatches that you can add one by one to your current file.

- Diane Burns

Kill the Stroke!
Did you just draw a rectangle and end up with a stroke on it that you didn't want? You can quickly change the fill and stroke attributes of any selected frame by pressing the following keys: Press the X key to toggle between the Stroke and Fill attributes. Press Shift-X and the fill color and stroke color will swap places. The comma key (,) applies the default color to the fill/stroke; the period key (.) applies the default gradient to the fill/ stroke; and the forward slash key (/) sets the current fill/stroke to None.
These shortcuts work in Illustrator, as well.
- Michael Ninness

The Spelling Menu
Sometimes you know a word is misspelled, but you're not sure how to spell it correctly. With Dynamic Spelling enabled (Preferences > Spelling > Enable Dynamic Spelling), you can right-click on a flagged word to choose from a contextual menu of suggested corrections.
- Mike Rankin

TIP: Align Left Edge of Drop Caps 
Often, when you create a drop cap in InDesign, the left edge of the character is not perfectly aligned with the left edge of the text frame. Some folks still use this old and painful trick: Insert a white space character in front of the drop cap and then manually add negative kerning to it. Ick! Instead, simply choose the Align Left Edge option in the Drop Caps and Nested Styles section in Paragraph Style Options. (Note: This is now enabled by default in CS5.)
- Michael Ninness

TIP: I Need My Space(bar)! 
Did you know that you can reposition an object while you're drawing out a frame? As you draw out the frame, don't release the mouse button. Instead, hold down the spacebar and drag the object to a new position. Then release the spacebar and finish drawing the object.
- Claudia McCue

TIP: The Incredible Growing Text "Frame" 
Need a text frame that grows or shrinks depending on the amount of text it contains? Try a one-cell table. You can turn off the strokes, add a fill, and text inset. As long as the row height is set to At least (the default), the cell will change height according to the amount of text within.
- Diane Burns

TIP: Color-Coded Highlighting 
Just about everyone has opened a document or placed copy only to see the text highlighted in a color. Here's what those highlight colors are telling you:
Pink: Missing font.
Yellow: Hyphenation and Justification (H&J) settings have been violated.
Amber (dangerously close to yellow): One or more alternate glyphs have been substituted for one or more glyphs in a font's standard set.
Green: Someone has applied manual kerning or tracking.

You'll always want to fix the missing font problem. But the other three colors don't necessarily mean anything is wrong; InDesign is simply alerting you to a change.

TIP: Track Down Obscure Glyphs
Uncommon glyphs come in three categories:
1. Characters you can enter using a keyboard, but only after a lengthy search for the proper key combination; for example, the pilcrow (Option/Alt-7) and the twisted sign of infinity (Option/Alt-5).
2. Characters that show up only in particular symbol or pi fonts. You can still type these on a keyboard, though it's often faster to open InDesign's Glyphs panel (Type > Glyphs), scroll through the list, and double-click the one you want.
3. The third type of glyph is beyond the realm of the keyboard; for example, the interpunct or the sound recording copyright. For a detailed how-to on inserting these characters, see my article "Tracking Obscure Glyphs" in the April/May 2011 issue of InDesign Magazine.
- David Blatner

TIP: Drag-and-Drop Anchored Objects
Anchored objects are not new; InDesign users have long been able to place graphics and text frames into the flow by anchoring them to specific places in running text. But in InDesign CS5.5, instead of a clunky cut-and-paste operation, you can simply grab a little blue box in the upper right hand corner of your desired object, and drag the resulting insertion point indicator to where you want to anchor the object. Want to reposition your anchor point? No more scouring the Story Editor for that anchor icon! Drag the blue anchor box again, setting the insertion point at your new desired location.
- Colleen Wheeler

TIP: Turn on Track Changes 
InDesign CS5 and 5.5 can track text changes, a handy feature when you're collaborating on a document or reviewing one another�™s work. Each team member should select a unique user name and tracking color (File > User), then enable tracking by going to Type > Track Changes.
- Pariah Burke

TIP: Carve Shapes Out of Letters with Pathfinder's Subtract Option

In the image above, I've subtracted a shape relevant to the word from the counter of one of the letters. To do this yourself, enter the word "CATS" and convert it to outlines (Type > Create Outlines). With the type selected, go to Object > Paths > Release Compound Path. Place a vector outline of a cat over the C, select both, and choose Object > Pathfinder > Subtract.
- Nigel French

TIP: Interlock Letters with the Pathfinder's Intersect Option

 
In the image above, I've created the illusion of interlocking letters to give the design greater depth. To do this yourself, enter text and convert it to outlines, then copy the text frame and Paste it in Place. (It helps to put the copy on a separate layer and lock the layer beneath.) With the type (now frames) selected, go to Object > Pathfinder and choose the Intersect option. That leaves just the overlapping pieces, which you can recolor to give the illusion that the letterforms are interlocking.
- Nigel French

TIP: When to Use Presentation Mode 
InDesign CS5's Presentation Mode (View > Screen Mode > Presentation) sounds like a natural fit for PowerPoint-style presentations, but it's not because any interactivity you've built into your layout (buttons, animations, transitions, etc.) won't work. Presentation Mode is better suited for a quick review of your layout as someone looks over your shoulder.
- James Fritz

TIP: Create an Animation along a Path 
Are you tired of the canned animations in InDesign CS5's Animation panel? If so, create your own. Using the pencil or pen tool, draw a path that you would like to have an object animate along. Next, select the path and the object that you want animate and go to the Object menu > Interactive > Convert to Motion Path. Now your object will move along this path. To reverse the direction of the path, click to select the path and go to the Object menu > Paths > Reverse Path.
- James Fritz

TIP: Craft Cool Drop Caps 
To create a drop cap in InDesign, insert your Type cursor into the paragraph where you want the large initial letter, type the number of lines for the drop cap in the Control panel, then specify the number of drop cap characters you want�”usually one. To refine the look of the drop cap, choose Drop Caps and Nested Styles from the Control panel menu (or Option/Alt-click on either of the drop cap icons in the Control panel).
- Nigel French

TIP: Lock It Away with CS5
When you want to prevent yourself from editing an object on the page, lock it by pressing Cmd/Ctrl+L. To unlock just the object, click the lock icon at the edge of its frame. To unlock everything on the spread, press Cmd+Opt+L (Ctrl+Alt+L). Another way to lock objects is to use InDesign's Layers panel to individually lock any item on the page.
- James Fritz

TIP: Put Your Files on a Diet 
For the slimmest possible InDesign files, follow these rules:

1. Don't copy and paste content from Photoshop or a web browser.
2. Don't place images right out of a digital camera into InDesign.
3. Don't leave extra items floating around (stuff on pasteboards, extra master pages or styles, and so on).
4. Do go to File > Save As to create a duplicate of your document.
5. Do resize images and set their resolution in Photoshop, not InDesign.
6. Do export as IDML or INX to clear out corruption and unneeded gunk.
- David Blatner and Mike Rankin

TIP: Stroll Through Multiple Tabbed Documents 
When you have multiple tabbed InDesign documents in a window, press Command/Control and the ~ (tilde) key to view the document the right of the one you're viewing. Press Command/Control-Shift-~ to see the document to the left of the one you're viewing.
- Mike Rankin

TIP: Spot On 
To create a new spot color swatch, Command-Option/Ctrl-Alt click the New Swatch button on the Swatches panel.
- Mike Rankin

TIP: Copy into a Fresh Frame
You can duplicate a placed graphic into a new frame just by selecting the graphic and option/alt dragging beyond the current frame. The new frame will have the same properties as if you drew it with the Rectangle Frame tool (no stroke or fill, Fitting of None, and zero for all crops).
- Mike Rankin

TIP: Spring-Loaded Tools to the Rescue 
InDesign tries very hard to help you align objects when you drag by snapping them Do you dislike the Frame Edge Highlighting that appears when you mouse over frames in CS5? Spring-loaded tools can help. Frame edge highlighting only appears when you use one of the selection tools. With spring-loaded tools, you can press and hold single keys to temporarily switch to any other tool. As long as you hold the key for more than a second, you'll switch back to your previous tool when you release the key. You have plenty of choices (t, \, p, f, m, n, c, e, g, z, etc).
Holding the spacebar also prevents the highlighting from appearing, and it's a nice big place for your fingers to rest. Heck, you don't even have to pay much attention to where you press--just rest your hand in the middle of the keyboard and lift it up when you want to select something. But don't hold v or a, which are the shortcuts for the selection tools.
- Mike Rankin