Tip of the Week: Copying and Pasting Guides
This CreativePro tip on copying and pasting guides was sent to Tip of the Week email subscribers on April 23, 2015.
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Did you know that you can copy and paste guides like regular page objects in InDesign? This can come in handy if you’ve set up some guides at very specific locations in one document and would like to replicate them quickly (and precisely) in another document. And it works with both old fashioned ruler guides as well as liquid guides for use with the Alternate Layout feature.
Just be sure both documents are either using facing pages or not. Otherwise the location of vertical guides will be off in the document where you paste them.
You can also quickly select all guides on a spread with the keyboard shortcut Command+Option+G (Mac) or Ctrl+Alt+G (Windows).
If you’re having trouble copying a guide, check to be sure that Lock Guides is disabled (View > Grids & Guides > Lock Guides).
But don’t try to copy guides and regular objects at the same time. This is impossible in InDesign.
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Great tip!
And, you can also custom-color your guides.
One way is to put them on a layer and color the layer. Or, directly, you can just select the guide and right click the mouse and choose “Ruler Guides” and choose any color for that individual guide.
You can use the color coding to distinguish vertical from horizontal, or different grids, or different alignments. Whatever works for your workflow.
Hi – this isn’t working for me. Have unlocked guides and can’t seem to ‘select’ the guides even when using the ‘Command option G’ shortcut. Any thoughts?
Same issue with me. Selection not occurring.
Make sure the layer you have the guides on is not locked