How do I do these certain things in Adobe InDesign CS5.5?

Question

Disclaimer: I'm fairly new at this, I haven't gone to school for it or anything, I'm just trying to teach myself this stuff as I go along, one piece at a time, so please, to the greatest extent possible, explain everything like I'm 5.

So I'm using Adobe InDesign CS5.5 to try to put together a PDF… it's a book I'm wanting to self-publish basically (a tabletop RPG, to be specific)… and being that I have the OCD (and lack of funds!) that I do, I want to try to do all the graphic design myself. So, in InDesign, I am learning it slowly but still can't figure out how to do one or two certain things. For example:

Is there any way where you can just make a text box, expand it to whatever size you want it, and then choose your font and have it automatically adjust your text for you to the absolute largest size that will fit in that box? Or do you always have to fiddle around with it manually?

Is there a way you can just put like “rulers” on the screen that you can see while working, but that don't go into the final PDF, so that you can zoom in or out and still have your points of reference where they intersect?

Is there any way to move boxes and stuff around with the directional buttons? Or to tell a box to just center itself on this X coordinate and that Y coordinate without having to manually move it there yourself?

I'm having a lot of trouble getting things to line up exactly. It has that handy lock-on feature, which is great, but when you zoom in to get a more detailed look, it's hard to know what you're selecting. Am I moving the background, or the box I think I've clicked on? Who knows.

Any answers would be most welcome and very appreciated.

Answer 1

1. Fit Text To Frame: not that I know of. There are hotkeys to increase/decrease font size, and you can also click in the Point Size edit control and use the arrow keys to increase and decrease.

2. You can drag horizontal and vertical guides out of the rulers at the top and left (if you don't have these, check the View window).

3. Use the arrow keys to move by small steps (the increment can be set in Preferences), or use the proxy in the Control bar. You can set the nine-point proxy to 'move' by any corner or center point. The x and y fields indicate the page position for that point; typing a new coordinate and pressing Enter or Tab will move the item.

4. You are using Smart Guides here. To see what you have selected, look in the Layers panel.

Answer 2

From your question and comments, I would strongly recommend signing up for a free trial week on Lynda.com and going through David Blatner's "InDesign Essentials" title and a couple of more advanced ones. He did two titles, at least, for CS5.5.

Apply your OCDness to defining terminology. If you don't know what a pica is, or any other term you come across, stop right there and look it up. You won't learn much, if anything, past that point unless you get the definition clear in your mind.

Any answers at this point, like jongware's, will leave you with lots more questions, but only because you don't have the fundamentals under your belt. Do David's Essentials course on Lynda. Then come back. We'll still be here. Promise!