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In the InDesign Essential Training title, I covered one of my favorite InDesign features,
called Quick Apply, and this let's you apply a style to either
text or an object quickly, keeping your hands on the keyboard.
And here's a quick refresher. Let's say I want to apply an object style
to these three objects. I could go to the Object Styles panel and
look for the style that I want to apply, but I want to do it with my hands on the keyboard.
How do I do it? Command-Return on the Mac, or Control-Enter
on Windows opens the Quick Apply window, this panel, a floating panel,
and it places the cursor up in this empty field here.
Now all I have to do is type "mid," and it guesses, "Oh, you want the mid drop shadow
object style." Yes, that's exactly what I want.
And when I hit Return or Enter, it applies that style to these selected objects.
So that's cool. I can do the same thing with text.
Let's go ahead and select this word down here, and I'll apply a character style to it.
Command-Return on Mac, or Control-Enter on Windows, and now I'll just type bold italic,
or bold i, and it guesses, "Yes, you want bold italic."
Perfect. Hit Enter or Return and it applies that bold italic character style to the text.
OK, that's cool, but what many Quick Apply users don't know is
that you can use secret modifier keys to make Quick Apply do even more.
For example, I'll deselect all of this by pressing Command-Shift-A, or Control-Shift-A
on Windows. That just deselects everything on the page.
And I'm going to edit that object style. I want it to be more than just the drop shadow.
How do I do that with keeping my hands on the keyboard?
Command-Return, or Control-Enter on Windows, opens Quick Apply.
I'll type "mid" for the mid drop shadow. Now instead of pressing Enter or Return, I'm
going to do another Command-Return, or Control-Enter on Windows.
Right? Do the same keyboard shortcut. Now when I do that, it won't apply the style,
it edits the style. Command-Return on it again, or Control-Enter
on Windows, opens the Style Options dialogue box, and
now I can make changes to this. For example, I'll give it a bevel and emboss,
that's kind of crazy, but you get the idea. Click OK, and now I can see that I have applied
a bevel and emboss to the object style, which ripples through the rest of the document.
So Command-Return or Control-Enter means edit the style.
Let me show you another secret modifier key. I'm going to place my cursor down here in
this paragraph, and I'll do a Command-2, or a Control-2 on Windows,
to zoom into 200%, and I can see that this paragraph, while most of it is in Minion Pro
font, this line for some reason got set to Times
New Roman. It's local formatting on top of the rest of
the formatting. And in fact, if I go to the Paragraph Styles
panel here, I can see that there's a little plus sign,
and that plus sign means that there's local formatting here.
Right? So how do I get rid of local formatting? No problem, I can do a Command-Return to jump
to the Quick Apply, or Control-Enter on Windows, type "body text,"
cause I know that's the name of this paragraph style, and I can type Option-Return.
Option-Return or Alt-Enter will remove all your local formatting from that paragraph.
It's basically exactly the same thing as going to the Paragraph Style panel and Option-clicking
on "body text." Now why did it not remove the local formatting
here? Because when you Option-click, or Alt-Enter
on Windows, it does not remove character styles. Remember, this word was applied with a character
style, something from the Character Styles panel.
It's the bold italic style. There we go, we can see that's selected there.
If you want to remove all the local formatting, including all the character styles,
you have to use a slightly different secret modifier key, Option-Shift-Enter on the Mac,
or Alt-Shift-Enter on Windows. Now just like we learned in the InDesign Essential
Training title, if you Option-Shift-Click on the paragraph style,
that's Alt-Shift-Click in Windows, it removes all the local formatting, including the character
styles. So here, I Command-Enter on the Mac, or press
Control-Enter in Windows, and that opens Quick Apply.
You see that it remembered what I last typed, so I don't have to type it again,
and then I press Option-Shift-Return on the Mac, or Alt-Shift-Enter in Windows.
And now, all the formatting is removed, even the character styles.
By the way, there is one other modifier key that I want to point out in Quick Apply, and
that is - I'll open it up with a Command-Return, or
a Control-Enter on Windows. Let's say I do something here, choose something,
or I type something, and I realize that's not really what I wanted to do.
Very important modifier key, very important keyboard shortcut inside Quick Apply, the
Escape key. The Escape key means, "Forget what I was doing,
big mistake, didn't mean to do it." Escape just closes it without doing anything.
You know, I love Quick Apply. It let's me accomplish so much more while
keeping my hands on the keyboard. Plus, it's fun to use.