Learn how to use GREP to describe all items in a list that begin with the same letter, then insert a space between and/or add an alphabetical heading to each alpha group. Covers GREP Find/Change, wildcard/location/found text metacharacters, character sets, marking subexpressions, and backreferences (an undocumented feature).

Launch day for Adobe's Creative Suite 5 is here, and so is my first podcast episode dedicated to the newest version of InDesign. In this episode, I take a look at a number of very cool new features in InDesign CS5. There's a lot more in the new version, but I've focused on some of my favorites, including span/split-column paragraphs, multiple page sizes, simplified transformations, metadata captions, the new Layers panel, and new animation features. This episode is kind of a a long one, but I've included chapter markers so you can quickly jump to the section of the episode you want to see.

Checkboxes and radio buttons and comb fields…oh my! In this episode, I take a look at adding form elements to an InDesign layout to create Acrobat-friendly checkboxes, radio buttons and comb fields, all of which can be achieved with a little help from anchored objects, GREP find/change and tables. You may also notice new feature added to the podcast starting with this episode: chapters. You can now jump right to a specific part of the lesson using the chapters built into the video file.

Recently, I’ve been doing a lot of work designing forms, which present their own unique design challenges, one of which is that more forms are being completed digitally as PDFs. As we’ll see in this episode, when you’re designing a form to be as Acrobat-friendly as possible, the same principles that make for a clean, function, well-organized form on the page also lend themselves to fast and easy form field recognition in Acrobat.

Today, Adobe announces the Creative Suite 4 in all of its various iterations (Design Premium, Web Premium, Production Premium, and so on). This updated Creative Suite includes another evolutionary and significant new version of InDesign and, in this episode, I take a look at some (but by no means all) of my favorite new features including Smart Guides, Flash export, and GREP Styles.

Inspired by a question from a podcast subscriber about creating a text frame that looks like a folder tab, and with the help of a technique suggested by another subscriber, this episode builds on the potential of Paragraph Rules revealed in Episode 49. By combining Paragraph Rules with First Baseline Offset options, a fully-editable, single-object tab-topped text frame is easy. But it gets easier and more interesting when Object Styles and Effects are added to the mix.

Most of us are familiar with the two types of Paragraph Rules, but in InDesign, despite their names, a Rule Above can easily appear below your text, and a Rule Below can just as easily appear above it. This ability to bend the rules, so to speak, can produce some very interesting and flexible type effects that don't require drawing extra frames, grouping anything or relying on anchored objects. This episode covers the rules of paragraph rules (and a bit about underlining) to showcase how flexible and versatile they can be.

At last month's InDesign Conference in Miami, an unexpected blackout cut my typography session short, so my demonstration of OpenType features never saw the light of day (no pun intended). In this episode, I bring that missing part of the presentation to all of you and take a look at several useful OpenType features including Ligatures, Discretionary Ligatures, Contextual Alternates, Small Caps, and Titling Alternates.

A subscriber's question about moving and copying layers led me to peel away the layers of the Paste Remembers Layers setting and discover a few things about how it behaves that I wasn't aware of. This episode shares that little discovery with all of you, while providing context for the overall behavior of Paste Remembers Layers, and ending with a tip for combining this feature with Snippets to accomplish something InDesign won't let you do by default.

OK...Christmas has already come and gone, I know, but it's still technically the holiday season, and the title of this episode is the title of a Christmas CD project I recently designed. That's the project I showcase in this episode, in which I demonstrate a holiday grab bag of InDesign goodies including: starting a document on a left-hand page, using the Slug area and Text Variables, placing InDesign documents inside of other InDesign documents, using frames to crop and manage vector shapes, inserting Column Breaks and other special break characters, and setting up looping Nested Styles.

Normally, I pick one InDesign feature and build a whole episode around it. However, this is the second anniversary of the podcast, and I wanted to demonstrate that combining InDesign features is far more powerful than using them individually. In this episode, I use six different features -- Anchored Objects, Frame Fitting, Object Styles, GREP, Paragraph Styles and Multi-file Place -- to eliminate all of the repetitive tasks from a layout.

It's that little feature we all take for granted, but InDesign's Text Wrap is a vast improvement over that other page layout application's Runaround feature. This episode takes an in-depth look at all of InDesign's Text Wrap options, reveals a few peculiarities to watch out for, and demonstrates the additional options added in CS3.

Who says data and design are mutually exclusive? Not InDesign, that's for sure. Under the right circumstances, data-driven layout is the way to go. Unlike XML, which makes designers run from their computers, the Data Merge feature in InDesign is an easy way to accomplish fast, flexible data-driven layout creation and updates. Using a subscriber's files as an example, this episode takes a video look a topic that was tackled way back in the audio-only days of Episode #7.

Who wants to see the home videos from my vacation? Before you run for the exits, let me rephrase that: Who wants to learn about how to add and work with videos in InDesign, create buttons to control them, export PDFs that will play them. In this episode, you'll learn how to put these great features to work, what limitations to be aware of, and how to turn your PDFs into rich interactive experiences by taking advantage of multimedia options in InDesign.

How would you like to have all versions of your (or your client's) logo available in one placed file and never have to worry about re-positioning them in the frame in your layout? In this episode, I share the tip I presented during the closing "tip extravaganza" session at last week's InDesign Conference in New York. It's a technique I plan to use all the time, and it builds on the topic of the last episode -- Object Layer Options -- but with Illustrator CS3 files this time.

It's time to get back to the original mission of the videocast -- real-world examples of InDesign in action to help you work better, smarter and faster. In this episode, I take a look at a feature that debuted in CS2: Object Layer Options. Not only does InDesign understand the native Photoshop format, it also understands Photoshop's layers and Layer Comps. Using one layered image from the opening spread of a magazine feature, I turn its layers into separate backgrounds, headers and pieces of spot art throughout the rest of the layout.

Another glipmse into the new and improved user experience you can expect when CS3 ships. This episode takes a quick look at the Pages palette (which now shows page thumbnails), the much-improved Control Panel, and menu customization in the new version.

Icons and panels and docks...oh my! At long last, the wait is over and the veil of secrecy is lifted. In this first look at InDesign CS3, I give a glimpse of what the new version looks like, because Adobe has given it -- and all of the Creative Suite applications -- a new user interface. Goodbye palettes (technically)...hello panels and docks. Here's a very brief glimpse at what users can expect to see when they finally get InDesign CS3 in their hot little hands.

The thrilling conclusion of the Long Documents series is finally here! In this episode, I wrap it all up with some last indexing shortcuts, generating an index (and how it differs from generating a TOC), formatting and updating an index, and making your index interactive in a PDF.

Continuing with the very long series on long document features after a long break, this episode finally tackles the feature that is the bane of many an InDesign user's existence: Indexing. This first of two indexing installments covers the basic principles of indexing as they apply to InDesign, including some up-front advice about what to expect and what not to expect the software to do for you. Also, I go through indexing basics such as working with the Index palette, creating Topics, References and Cross-References, Topic Levels and sorting. And that's only the first half!