Adobe InDesign: Avoiding first line indent of the first paragraph (via Paragraph Style)

Question

In InDesign, is it possible to create a Paragraph Style that indents the first line starting with the second paragraph instead of the first paragraph? In other words, I would like to create a Paragraph Style with no First Line Indent in the paragraph right beneath the headline (naturally the first paragraph). All remaining/following paragraphs of the style should receive a First Line Indent.

As of now, the only way I know to achieve this (besides not using paragraph styles and setting everything by hand) is to create a Paragraph Style with the First Line Indent set to whatever is needed and than changing the indent of the paragraph beneath the headline manually to 0. Is there some way to automate this process?

Answer 1

Create two styles, Indent and No Indent.

When you set your copy, do one of two things:

1. Make everything Indent and manually change the first one to No Indent.
2. In the paragraph settings for No Indent, change Next Style to Indent. (I forget where this is exactly and I don't have the program open to check.) It won't flow that way automatically, but at the end of your No Indent paragraph, when you hit return, it will change to Indent automatically.

Answer 2

There are better ways. The best one I've found is Jongware's suggestion on this page: https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/remove-indent-in-first-line-find-change-command/td-p/4047487 That's not even the "correct answer" of the thread, so make sure to locate the right solution! On the link above I also added a screenshot of the search & find window for demonstration. Here are the most relevant parts of its text:

[...] the unique thing about these paragraphs is that there is "nothing" before them in that paragraph style.

Search for this, using GREP:

(?<!\r)^.

and make sure your paragraph style is set in the Find Formatting field.

[...] put "0" in the First Line Indent to make it override the applied settings.