Most designers know that styles are an effective way to efficiently format text, and that it’s best to apply styles consistently to ensure a cohesive, visually pleasing design.

The Redefine Paragraph and Character Styles feature gives you the ability to visually redesign how a style looks in a layout with local formatting and then redefine the style’s attributes with one click. What’s key is that all content to which that style has been applied will automatically update to reflect the changes, so you won’t have to search through the document and reapply the new style manually.

Follow these steps to redefine a style:

  1. Apply a style to text through the Paragraph or Character Styles panels.
  2. Locally modify that text by changing it using the Control panel, or the Character or Paragraph panels.
  3. Locate the original style in the Paragraph Styles or Character Styles panel. It will appear with a plus sign after it, indicating that local formatting has been applied.
  4. Right-click (CTL-click without a mouse) on the style name and select Redefine Style from the panel menu.
  5. The style properties will update, and the plus sign will disappear. All content in the document that has that style applied will be updated to reflect the changes.

The time-saving benefits are clear—so try it!

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Note: Information contained in this post is current at the time of posting. Visit the Technology for Publishing News & Events blog for the latest info on Adobe software releases and functionality.

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Posted by: Monica Murphy

Monica Murphy
Monica Murphy has worked in the publishing industry for over 30 years supporting publishing operations of various sizes. In her role as Technical Product Manager for Technology for Publishing, she shares her publishing application expertise supporting a broad range of publishing clients in InDesign best practices, cross-platform content workflows, and InDesign Template strategies. Her weekly tip and blog posts have a committed following in the InDesign community, and as a long-time participant in the InDesign pre-release community, she regularly analyzes and provides feedback for upcoming features. Monica manages the authoring and publication of Technology for Publishing’s handbooks on InDesign, InCopy, and other associated titles.
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