Removing Parentheses from the Font Size Field

Yesterday we learned that, when a text frame is grouped with oth­er objects and scaled, InDesign reflects both the orig­i­nal and scaled size of the type in the Font Size field. It does so by includ­ing two val­ues, such as “50 pt(24.85)”. The first is the size orig­i­nal­ly set, while the par­en­thet­ic val­ue is the actu­al dis­play size of text after scal­ing with­in the group.

The fact that InDesign tracks and tells both your orig­i­nal, delib­er­ate­ly set type size and what it real­ly is after rescal­ing is wicked cool and def­i­nite­ly bet­ter than some oth­er pro­grams that tell you just the orig­i­nal size. (Like being told that your four lines of 72-point type are still 72-point even though the whole text frame/box fits in a 1‑inch square.) Although impor­tant and cool, some­times you don’t care about the orig­i­nal size; some­times you want to know just the final dis­play size; some­times “50 pt(24.85)” real­ly just bugs the snot out of you.

There’s a super secret trick to uni­fy the values.

First, ungroup the text frame from oth­er oth­er objects (Object > UnGroup). Select only the text frame (notice that the scale per­cent­age fields on the Transform and Control palettes are not list­ed as 100%). From the fly­out menu on the Transform or Control palette, select the new option that has appeared near the top–Scale Text Attributes.

Voila! No more duel mea­sure­ments. Only the pre­vi­ous­ly par­en­thet­ic mea­sure­ment remains because the type has been resized to match the scaled frame.