Expert: Roy Wilhelm - 2/16/2010

Question
I am very new to Indesign, I have CS4 pc, I am used to Quark xpress version 5.0. I want to be able to have one file open I am working on, then open another file and copy and past some things from one file to the other, but I cant figure out how to keep both files open, I have to keep going to open file each time. also in Quark you could view thumbnails of two different files and I could have both on the screen at once and I could click and drag a whole page from one file to another.  cant figure out how to do this either.  again I am very new to Indesign so would need simple instructions.  thanks !

Answer
Hi June,

I work on ID CS3 on a Mac, so it's possible the software interface is designed differently in CS4 for PC. What happens if you try to open both files at the same time? (Instead of opening one and then trying to open a second file.) Are you saying that ID closes your first file? If so, that's a problem with the software that I've never encountered. You can see a list of all open files if you click on  "Window" in the menu bar at the top of the application. The list is at the very bottom and should have a bullet next to the active file.

Ok, so when you figure out how to have two files open at once, here's how to transfer pages from one file to the other:

1. Open the "Pages" palette.
2. Click on the ID file with the page/s you want to transfer.
3. In the Pages window, select the icons of the pages you want to copy to the other file.
4. Click and drag those icons over to the second file and release the mouse.
5. An option window will pop up asking you where you want the pages to go in the second file.
6. You're done!