How can I use the InDesign direct selection tool or pen tool on a path that has a text wrap over it, without just hitting the text wrap contour?
So to recap: in InDesign, when you apply a text wrap to an object - pushing away text above or below the object (or more often, only below if you change the Composition options in Preferences) - it creates a path-like object (a text wrap contour) that marks precisely where text is prevented from going.
You can edit this path like any other path using the Pen tool or A
direct selection tool (white arrow). Using the V
selection tool (black arrow), you can select the original object and its text wrap contour, moving or transforming them together. Holding down alt
(opt
) with the Direct Selection tool - which makes it act like Illustrator's Group Selection tool, adding more elements to the selection up the tree with each click - you can select the whole text wrap contour and move it as a unit.
Great, but there's something missing from all this. Assuming the original object is a vector path, how do you select individual points of the original path, not the pale, lighter coloured, greyed-out looking path of the text wrap contour? And how do you add or remove points to it with the pen tool? The normal way just grabs points from the text wrap contour, even if it has been sent to the back of the stacking order.
A few options that kind of work, but aren't ideal:
- Turn the text wrap off, manipulate the object, turn it back on again. Potentially a big pain and not suitable if you want to change the path but not the wrap.
- Select the whole text wrap boundary, hold shift, hit a cursor key in any direction making a big nudge in that direction, edit the original path, then big nudge it back into place. Not a bad option, but a bit of a pain.
Surely there's a better way? Is there any way to toggle or specify whether it's the path, or the text wrap contour, that I'm interested in?