From the course: InDesign 2024 Essential Training

Adding or editing text - InDesign Tutorial

From the course: InDesign 2024 Essential Training

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Adding or editing text

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- [Instructor] Okay, we have our document open, but we have a problem. It's mostly empty. Empty document, not good. Let's look at how we can get some text in here. The main tool in InDesign for manipulating text is the type tool. That's the one with a T on it over here in the tool panel. Now, the type tool lets us do two things in InDesign. It lets you create text frames, that is, frames that are going to contain text, and it also lets you edit the text inside those frames. So first, let's take that type tool and drag out a rectangle on my page. I'll do it right here in the middle. When you let go of the mouse button, you'll see that the type tool created a frame and the text cursor is flashing inside of there, so you can start typing now. Another way to get text into InDesign is to place a text file, and you can place a text file or a Word file or even an RTF file with fully formatted text inside any text frame. In this case, let's put the text inside this frame over here on the left, so we'll click in here with the type tool. Then let's go to the file menu and choose place, or you could press command-D or control-D on Windows. Let's choose the file we want, which is this one here, Chapter One Intro.docx. That's a Microsoft Word document, and then I'll click open. That places all the formatted text inside the text frame, and that's because the text cursor was flashing in there when we placed it. Now over here on the right, we have a text frame with some text in it. It says, "Product Overview," but it's too small. I can't read it. Let's select it by dragging the type tool over that text. Then I'm going to use the properties panel on the right side of the screen to format this. If for some reason you don't see the properties panel, you can always find it by going to the window menu and choosing properties. The properties panel is cool because it changes depending on what you have selected on your page and what tool you're using. Because we've selected some text, it gives us a bunch of options for formatting that text. First, to make this text larger, let's use the text size field right here in the middle. You could pick a size from this pop-up menu, but because I know that I want this to be exactly 28 points, I'll just type that in here. Then when I press return or enter, the text size changes. I can also set the line spacing, what's called leading, with this field right here. I'll change this to 30. Now let's change the color. You can do that by choosing a fill color from this pop-up menu in the properties panel. This lists all the color swatches in this document, including paper. That's what InDesign calls white. I'll talk about color swatches and how to create new ones in a later chapter. In this case, let's scroll down this list and choose this brown color. Great, now let's change the font. The font field is here, but you get a lot more options if you click the popup menu. You can also type the name of your font. I'll just type M-O-N-T and it guesses I want Montserrat. Then I can choose the style here. I'll choose Montserrat semi bold. Let's make one more change. I'll click this little button down here with the little three dots. That gives me more options, and then I'll choose this TT button on the left. That makes it all caps. That looks great. Let's make one more little text formatting change here in this frame on the left. First I'll select some of this text. Now I can zoom in on it using the Zoom tool, which looks like a magnifying glass. I simply click and drag it out and it zooms in. Okay, to make this selected text italic, I'll head back to my properties panel and use the font style menu. I could just choose italic here, or you could press command-shift-I on the Mac or control-shift-I on Windows. Now this document is starting to come together, but you know what would really help? Adding some pictures. Fortunately, that's where we're headed next.

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