If assignments have kept you from incorporating InCopy into your publishing workflow, don’t let them intimidate you. You don’t have to use assignments to benefit from using InCopy.
In this series of tips, we’ll show several methods to collaborate efficiently in InCopy and InDesign without assignments.
Method 3:
Most often employed in the last phase of periodical editing or in workflows that depend largely on revising pre-existing documents, the third method of using InCopy in a collaborative workflow involves directly editing the InDesign .INDD document in InCopy.
Yes, InCopy will open full InDesign documents, even though InCopy doesn’t have all of InDesign’s features. In InCopy, just open the InDesign document and start editing. In Layout view, the full InDesign layout will be visible, and you can begin editing directly in any text frame. Even images in graphic frames can be exchanged for last minute photo substitution.
In story or galley view it gets even easier: All stories (from all text frames) in the current document are listed sequentially in a collapsible list. Check-in/check-out works normally, too.
The only caveat is that any changes made directly within the InDesign document will not be written back to any external InCopy documents that may be linked from it. If that isn’t a stumbling block for your InCopy workflow, this method allows the most precise editorial control because you’re working with the real, going-to-press layout, and can make copy edits and basic text styling changes with absolute precision.