What is InCopy and Why Should You Care?

What is InCopy and why should you care? Any designer who has had to remove and then replace a comma and then remove it again will see immediate benefits with InCopy. Increase your productivity by letting your copy editors and content creators edit the copy in your design without letting them access the InDesign file directly. Let's unravel the mysteries of this esoteric software and discover new workflows that can save you time.

What you'll learn:

• Why InCopy exists.
• How to export stories from InDesign to InCopy.
• How to export assignments.
• How to optimize paragraph and character styles for InCopy.
• How to work with tables and table styles.
• How to work with anchored objects.

Free Parking

Parking will be free. Check back here in a few days for exact parking lot location.

Meeting Notes

Continuing our policy of meeting in diverse locations through Los Angeles County, the January LAIDUG meeting was held in a City of Los Angeles Fire Station. Well, kind of. Actually Fire Station 82 in Hollywood has a brand new state-of-the-art conference room that they occasionally make available to selected community groups. The second floor facility came complete with kitchen area, LCD projector, motorized screen and two wall-mounted monitors for the benefit of those in the rear. Each participant not only had a chair, but a table as well.

William Baughman, an Adobe ACE certified expert in Adobe InDesign, filled this great space with a presentation on InCopy, a word processing program made by Adobe to integrate with InDesign. InCopy lets copywriters and editors style text, track changes, and make simple layout modifications to a document while designers work on the same document simultaneously in InDesign—all without overwriting each other's contributions.

The first part of William's presentation focused on a quick and dirty way of exporting InCopy, ICML, files. This method is a shortcut and does not require the user to export InCopy, ICMA, files. This method is recommended for collaborating with editors in a closed environment where they do not have access to InDesign.

Then William went over a more structured method of working involving Assignment files. This is the best way to manage multiple editors in a single document. Assignment files can be easily managed via the Assignments palette. But it is imperative the Assignment files be updated. The evening ended with a general overview of working in InCopy and a question and answer period.

Farthest Attendee

The bona fide LAIDUG member who travels the farthest specifically to attend the meeting will receive her or his choice of any one deal at MightyDeals up to $50.00. You need to prove to us that you traveled farthest to attend this meeting. Having recently moved to the area from somewhere else won't cut it. Be prepared to show us indication of your current residence—perhaps a driver's license or a utility bill. Decision of the administrators of the Los Angeles InDesign User Group is final. Winner — Waverly Reed

Raffles

LAIDUG meetings are free. The group is supported by raffles of donated prizes. No one is required to participate in the raffles. Raffle tickets are: 1 for $3, 2 for $5, 5 for $10, 11 for $20, 24 for $40, 32 for $50 and 65 for $100. All major credit cards are accepted.

Special Raffle Prize

Since this month's meeting is about in-COPY, the lead prize in this month's raffles is a genuine Xerox COPY machine, Xerox WorkCentre 3215. Winner — Alan Gilbertson

Raffle Prizes and Winners

GoProof from Oppolis Software. 3 month subscription for 2 users. Value $300.00 Winner — Robin Schiff
Proofing add-on for Adobe Creative Cloud. Version history tracks what has been changed and by whom.

Markzware. Any single product. 12 month subscription. Value $199.00 Robin Schiff (PDF2DTP)
Choose one from the list below:
Q2ID (Quark to InDesign), Convert and open QuarkXPress files in InDesign.
PDF2DTP (PDF to InDesign), Convert PDF files to InDesign.
ID2Q (InDesign to Quark), Convert and open InDesign documents in QuarkXPress.
MT (Markzware), Convert InDesign documents to IDML files readable by InDesign CS4 through CC 2017.
FC (FlightCheck), Check native and PDF files for printing quality.

Expo Creative Asset Manager for Mac from Insider Software. Value $149.00 Winner — Lucy Hawkins
Digital asset manager that allows you to view, tag, search and manage images, icons, fonts, audio, video, app documents.

Suitcase Fusion 8 from Extensis. 12 month subscription. Value $119.95 Winner — Norine Lukaczyk
Font management program that allows you to organize your fonts from one plane—including system fonts, purchased fonts, fonts synced from Adobe Typekit, Google fonts, etc.

Font Agent Pro 8 from Insider Software. Value $99.95 Winner — Stan Baryla
Windows font management that allows you to organize, distribute and control your fonts.

InMotion Hosting. Web hosting and free domain. Value $90.00 Winner — Waverly Reed
Web hosting company.

DTP Tools Cloud for InDesign. 6 month subscription. Value $77.40 Winner — Douglas Magill
Suite of 14 different InDesign productivity tools.

Multi-Find/Change 3.0 from Automatication. Value $49.95 Winner — Douglas Magill
Extension for InDesign and InCopy that allows you to manage and execute Find/Change queries in batches rather than one at a time.

Adobe Stock. 15 image licenses. Value $44.00 Winner — Douglas McCarthy
Royalty-free, high-quality photos, videos, and illustrations.

InDesign Magazine. 6 month subscription. Value $30.00 Winner — Joyce Dallal
Monthly PDF publication devoted to InDesign how-tos, in-depth features, and quick tips.

LA Web Professionals Group meeting tickets.Value $7.99 (four raffles) Winners — Douglas Magill, Amanda Tannen
Adobe user group that meets monthly with an emphasis on web design, marketing and the latest internet trends.

About the Presenter

William Baughman

William Baughman started his career at advertising agencies and publishing companies in New York in 2004. Since then he has worked in many different roles picking up many skills and tricks along the way. He is an Adobe Certified Expert in InDesign CC, GREP enthusiast, and production design guru.

William holds a Bachelor of Fine Art and Photography from the School of Visual Arts based in New York New York.