r/indesign • u/cup-of-ccino • 4d ago

Anchored inline images and text flow

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I regularly make these attendee booklets for events hosted by my company. Each of these is set up as separate text boxes with an accompanying image frame for the attendee's headshot—not ideal, i know. I'd like to recreate all of this as a single text flow linked over several pages. We list guests alphabetically and, if a guest drops out, I've got to remove them and manually shift everyone up and over. Maddening.

I know I can anchor images in a text flow but the settings aren't always intuitive to me, especially when I want multiple lines of text—vertically center aligned—next to the images. I know I could group these blocks and paste them into a text flow, but I've noticed glitches that occur whenever I have to delete a block in the flow.

And is there a way I could set this up to automatically switch left and right paragraph alignment throughout if I delete someone in the flow, since the design alternates back and forth? That's another head scratcher for me.

Thanks in advance!

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u/AdobeScripts 4d ago edited 3d ago

OK. I was telling porkies 😞

But here is a fully automatic solution 😉

Split your box into two - text + image - thread them on the pages - image first then text.

Your Story - alternate image and text - image in a separate paragraph before the text.

Now, you've two options: A) make your text as one Paragraph - with forced line ends to separate information - and use Nested Styles and CharStyles to format text, B) make your text as you've right now - separate paragraphs - will require multiple ParaStyles.

Now, create 3x Object Styles: 1) for images - universal, 2) for texts aligned to the left, 3) for texts aligned to the right.

Now, depends on the A) or B) - you'll have to create appropriate ParaStyles - that you'll have to apply to 2) - only one if A - and 3) - first in the chain with Next Text style if B.

Because TextFrames dedicated for text will have ParaStyles applied - they'll automatically format contents - when you add / remove people.

it's late and I'm typing on my phone 😞 but I hope you can understand what I mean. If not, then I can prepare visual version in the morning