The new paragraph shading feature would be fantastic to use for laying out text message conversations in books, but needs a few tweaks to make is fully functional. Text messages in books is becoming very common.

It used to be that you had to create shapes and anchor each in for a text message. Now you can use Paragraph Shading defined in the style for left side texts with no adjustments, but because right side text messages need to have the "bubble" shape aligned right, but the interior text left aligned. My solution is (see sample file):
Create three base paragraph styles:
1. <leftsidetext>: Defined: All text styling, right/left indents, alignments, and space above/below, etc.
2. <rightsidetext>: Defined: Based on <leftsidetext>, but remove left/right indents
3. <rightsidetextalign>: Defined: Based on <rightside_text>, but change to align flush right, add right indent 18pt, turn off paragraph shading.

Next steps:
1. Cut out all the rightsidetext and create a standalone text frame for each text.
2. Create (or leave) empty returns where each right side text was and apply <rightsidealign> to the return.
3. Paste the text frames into the empty returns where appropriate to anchor frame.
4. Select each frame and apply the Object style (Text Message Right in sample file attached).

Could there be a way to separately control the shading alignment from the interior text alignment within the paragraph style? Much like how text functions within a div?

I see far too many younger designers not know how to use or simply refuse to use paragraph styles, character styles, layers, and even master pages.

I'd love to see these options available in the open new document settings, just as we pick the page size, margins and gutters, I'd like styles to be an option.

As a frequent contract designer, there's nothing worse than going into someone else's InDesign document and spending more time organizing the file, making sure the entire document is formatted properly with the correct styles, separating items in proper layers... Anything to help new documents focus on making sure the file is going to be consistent in its typography.

The ability to create a content format as a style. Example: currency - so you could have 19.95 or 3 or 12.2, you would have a "currency" style that takes the numbers and reformats as $19.95, $3.00, or $12.20 (with the ability to add character styles to specific elements) - so you could make the cents be superscript, make the decimal disappear. Also adding the option as to whether or not the styling should be virtual (the actual content is not changed, just the appearance) or restyled (it would actually change the content). This could be done in a GREP method, but actually allow the grep style to add characters to the output. Examples could also be automatically adding a thin-space inside of a style meant to "highlight" a word (so that the highlight starts and ends outside of the word/phrase). This could also allow for the inserting of formatting characters needed for a particular output (like a list of definitions - we need the first word, then a tab, then a hard-align character, then a run-in, an italic, etc...

Currently in InDesign CC2019, if you have paragraph styles with the same 'Paragraph Border' and 'Paragraph Shading' settings, these will merge with consecutive paragraphs if the appropriately-named 'Merge Consecutive Borders and Shading with same Settings' options is set.

But what if you want to have consecutive paragraphs with the same border, but different shading, or vice versa? No options allow this.

I suggest that the 'Merge Consecutive Borders and Shading with same Settings' option is split into two; 'Merge Consecutive Borders with same Settings' under 'Paragraph Border', and 'Merge Consecutive Shading with same Settings' under 'Paragraph Shading'.

Having the two options as one as it is currently presents users with an odd limitation that doesn't seem immediately logical.

Discovered that when you use the new adjust layout option to change a document from an A3 to and A4 (for example), the character and paragraph styles already applied when it was A3 do not change to reflect the new text size that has been adjusted when going to A4. So when you go to apply a style to a new piece of text, the formatting is wrong. It also removes the styles that have been previously applied to some of the text. I have searched for a work around and cannot locate one.

Could you please add an option/check box in the adjustment layout window that you can apply the text size adjustment to styles? This will save a lot of formatting time, especially if you're in a work environment where you are producing presentations and portfolios constantly, coping text, importing tables and need to apply styles, etc.

Thanks!

1) Please make the TOC dialogue box scaleable: especially the include paragraph styles box is unmanageable (long names are not visible and after applying settings to a style it scrolls back to the top of the list)
2) Please include option to strip or override character styles in TOC
At the moment you need a lot of paragraph styles to set up the TOC, especially when having multicoloured headlines, both in document and TOC
3) Please give text boxes an option "include in TOC" (helpful when having the same headline on several pages) and the option to enter alternate wording and line breaks. For easier formatting of the TOC it would be great to have the possibility to make groups (chapters)