gutter width in Indesign

[anisa]

Hi, Does anybody know how to change gutter width in text block with colums. (InDesign CS) Would really appreciate an advice. Thank you!

[SpugNothuson]

I think the keystroke you're looking for is Ctrl+B (PC) or Apple+B (Mac).

There should be an option there to adjust how many columns you'd like and the gutter width between them.

[anisa]

It works! Thank you so much.
See, how would I know? - the Indesign help didn't say anything about this shortcut and their solution just click with selection tool and drag was not working for some reason.
Thanks again!

[hewligan]

Well, it's a short-cut for Object->Text Frame Options, so while you'd never have guessed the shortcut, you might have found it there. Though, probably not. I'm not convinced that's very obvious, either...

[SpugNothuson]

Cheers Hewligan, I can never remember the proper names of option windows or tools. I've become a Shortcut whore, I remember things by KeyStrokes now. It's a slippery slope. :(

[budafist]

Another question - it's been bugging me forever but I've just found ways around it.

Say you have 3+ columns, can you change the gutter between the columns so that they are different. Say gutter between c1 and c2 is 5mm but I want the gutter between c2 and c3 to be 15mm.

How?

Normally I draw new text boxes and move them away to fit.

Also how to change column widths individually? Say c1 is 60mm, c2 is 70mm and c3 is 80mm.

[Craig B]

The only way I can think of is with 3 separate text boxes, and not using columns.

[budafist]

Damn, that's the way I do it.

[hewligan]

Yeah, that's the only way I can think of. Mind you, I usually put columns in seperate text boxes, anyway. A sad by-product of too many years using Pagemaker :(

Still, if you've got your column guides set up right, it's not that much effort.

[budafist]

It's ok hewligan pagemaker is dead now. No one will make you go back to the bad place.

[hewligan]

I know, but some days I have these flashbacks.

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN I ONLY GET 1 UNDO?!??!?!"

[budafist]

Just take it one day at a time. Have you joined any therapy groups?

[balou]

I can remember when multiple undos came to Photoshop & Illustrator. Oh the parties!

[urstwile]

I've actually always preferred multiple text boxes that are linked over one text box with multiple columns and a fixed gutter. The reason is that back in the old days, sometimes you'd want to cheat the line width of a column by a few points. Easy to do on the old mainframe typesetting systems. Hard to do when it's one text box with three columns and the same gutter for each. So I tend to do multiple text boxes for that reason.