Symbols panel / Quick apply formatting
Not sure if this suggestion lives under styles. What I'm thinking InDesign needs is a feature like Illustrators symbol library where we can take a group of pre styled objects and define them so that they can be easily dragged back on to the page rather than continually copying and pasting from other parts of a document on to then overtype or swap out images etc. as you build documents consisting of replicable structured content.
Functionality would need to be like Illustrator, a simple drag and drop interface on to a panel. So that any images, shapes, text frames, styles. colours etc are captured into one grouped object that can then later be recalled at will. Ideally through hot-key activation.
Then the link can be 'broken' to it's source so that it can be updated with new content.
Rob Hutchings
shared this idea
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Tony
commented
@Scott Falkner
Yes, in this case, it only pertains to symbols within the document. If you alter an object in your library and you have it linked in other documents, it will attempt to change that object in those documents as well. Also, you don't have to open a new document or program to make a global change to all instances of that object. -
Tony
commented
I don't know why this isn't getting more attention. It's so useful to be able to alter many instances of a symbol all at once. I know InDesign already has object styles but that's not exactly the same. Symbols don't just involve formatting like stroke, fill, fx, etc. It allows you to completely change the symbol (e.g. from a circle to a square) and have it reflected throughout the document.
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Scott Falkner | ACP
commented
Is this significantly different from the Library feature?