Lesson A: Multiple Text Columns

• Open the downloaded document called 5 Frame Options & Object Styles.indd.

Before we proceed to any particular page, take a look at the bottom of page 1. Do you see a message telling you there’s an error in this document?

• Double-click on that error message. The Preflight panel opens with a listed Text error.
• Click the arrow to the error’s left to disclose that there’s one instance of overset text. Click its disclosure arrow to see that the culprit is a text frame on page 2.

• The page number is a link! Click it, and you’re looking at our first exercise. That troublesome frame will even be selected for you. Fit the entire spread in the window (⌘-option-0/Ctrl-Alt-0).
• Notice that at the bottom of the Preflight panel there is one more disclosure next to the word Info. Click it!

A kind Adobe employee wrote possible fixes for many of the common issues that can trigger errors. Let’s attempt a couple of these solutions to see if they solve this case.

Columns and Gutters

• Using the Selection tool, be sure that the text frame on page 2 is selected. Drag its left-side handle to widen it so that it occupies two columns of space (as indicated by the guides on that page).

Of course, this reduces the amount of overset text. One way to monitor how much is left is to check the Info panel (Window > Info).

• Double-click in the frame to insert the text cursor.

The Info panel will show how many characters, words, lines, and paragraphs are in the story. The values shown after the plus sign are how many of these are overset. The values to the left are for the ones that are visible. To adjust text frame options using the Properties panel or the Control panel, we need to have the frame selected. But if we do that, we lose the information we’re tracking in the Info panel. However, there is a way to get around this:

• With your cursor still blinking in the text of that frame, right-click and choose Text Frame Options…, or use the shortcut ⌘-B/Ctrl-B.
• Enable the Preview (checkbox at lower left), then change the number of columns.

Toggling the Preview will cause the Info panel to recalculate the values it monitors (often with a delay). Often, but interestingly not in this case, adding a column or two to a wide frame results in a more efficient fit.

• Change the Gutter value, too. This is the space between the columns and will affect copy-fit. Set the Gutter to 1p0 and the Columns to 2, then click OK. We will examine that dialog box further a little later.
• Use the esc key to select the frame and activate the Selection tool. We’ll now try another bit of advice from the Preflight panel: “Add text frames to the story thread.”

Frames as Columns: Threading Text

• Click the overset text indicator (the red plus sign in the frame’s out port) to load the cursor.
• With the loaded cursor, click on page 3’s top margin guide within the first column:

A new text frame appears—between the column guides horizontally and between the margin guides vertically. If you don’t see a line connecting the two text frames, go to View > Extras > Show Text Threads.

When we set up a document’s structure (the subject of the next chapter), we include margins and column guides so we can quickly and consistently populate the document with content.

• Click this new frame’s overset indicator, loading the cursor again.
• Then click perhaps a third of the way from the top, between the second column’s guides. A third frame appears whose top is where you clicked. This is fun. Let’s do it again, but a little differently….
• Click this frame’s overset indicator, then drag diagonally to create a frame above the elliptical frame, ignoring the guides if you like. Now it’s time for the last one.
• Click the most recent frame’s overset indicator, then, with the loaded cursor, click in the heart of the elliptical frame. You could have clicked in any shape, whether filled or stroked or naked like this one.
• Using the Selection tool, adjust the size of the frames and note how the text flow responds. Can you reveal all of the overset text?

Adding Frames and Deleting Frames

Now you know how to add frames to continue a story. There’s more that you can do.

• Select one of the frames (perhaps the one in the second column of page 3) with the Selection tool and delete it. When you select one of the remaining frames, you’ll see the text has just retracted into those, likely becoming overset again. Not a single word has really been lost.

Each frame has an in port and an out port. You can see the text threads flow from the out port of one frame to the in port of the next. You’ve just created a gap in the flow, which the thread leaps over. We’ll now plug that gap.

• Select the frame that followed the frame you deleted. Click its in port and the cursor will be loaded.
• Either drag to create a frame of arbitrary shape and size, or click within the column guides to control the frame’s size easily. You now have a frame in that part of the story’s flow.

We could have clicked on the previous frame’s out port and gone forward rather than working backward, but I wanted you to know that either is possible.

More on this and our next topic, text frame options, can be found in the Compendium, in the section titled “Text Frames & Text Frame Options” (page 200).