If you're used to other layout applications, you may be unaware of all the things you can do with ruler guides in InDesign. In this tip you'll learn everything you could possibly need to know about the subject, including locking, snapping, copying and pasting, layer management, stepping and repeating, aligning and more. If you use guides in your work (if you're not you should), read on.

Controlling ruler guides: numeric positioning
Have you ever wished you numerically control the position of a ruler guide? In InDesign you can do exactly that.[an error occurred while processing this directive]1. Use any tool to click on your horizontal or vertical ruler to drag out a ruler guide. With the guide still selected, note that either the X or Y coordinate will display in the Transform palette.

2. With the ruler guide selected, enter different values in the Transform palette and note that in InDesign you can control the position of a ruler guide numerically, not by just by dragging and dropping the guide. This feature gives you much greater levels of precision and control over the positioning of your ruler guides.



Controlling ruler guides: snapping to objects
Have you ever wished you had a quick way to snap a ruler guide exactly to the edge of an object on your page? Check out this little shortcut in InDesign.

1. Select the object to which you'd like to snap the ruler guide with the selection tool.

2. When you drag out a ruler guide, drag the two-headed cursor over one of the selected object's handles. This will snap the ruler guide exactly to the edge of the frame. There's no need to zoom into 4000% to verify that the guide is positioned correctly.



Controlling ruler guides: snapping to ruler ticks
Have you ever wished you had a quick way to snap a ruler guide exactly to a specific tick mark on your horizontal or vertical ruler?

Hold down the Shift key when you drag a ruler guide. Notice that it snaps to the ticks on the horizontal or vertical ruler. When you release the Shift key, the guide reverts back to the default behavior and doesn't snap to the ruler ticks.



Controlling ruler guides: copy and paste
Have you ever wished you had a quick way to duplicate a set of guides on a different page or in a different document? In InDesign, ruler guides are objects that you can copy and paste using the Clipboard.

1. Suppose you've created bleed guides out on your pasteboard on one spread and you'd like to have those same guides in another. One way to do this is to select the bleed guides you've created (more on fast, easy ways to do this later in this tip document), and use the Edit > Copy command.

2. Switch to the target spread in the same or different document , and use Edit > Paste to paste the ruler guides into the same position they had in the source spread. Note that if you're pasting guides into another document, the target spread needs to have same page dimensions in order for the original guide positioning to be maintained.





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