anybody here good at indesign? or do i have to

throw my laptop through the window?
i am not THAT good at this stuff, but i took on a project for my (poor, progressive) local party. i just upgraded to idd from pagemaker. used quark some, too. not bad at photoshop. i can usually trudge through and figure things out. but it has locked up on me a couple of times, and i don't know if it is broke, or i am stupid. i don't seem to be able to drag things around once they are inside of another box. i click through to select them, i can move them through the control panel, i can stretch the box, but i cannot get it to drag. the bigger box drags instead.
help?!?

i figured out a work around for this one, but i have a nagging text wrap question.
must be someone out there that speaks this stuff.

sometimes the best solution is to fix the problem in the code if possible.

If you have something placed in the document, for example a photo that's then been cropped in InDesign, you can select the white arrow (aka the Direct Selection tool) to click on the photo and you should be able to move the photo around inside its frame with either the mouse or the arrow keys (if you want finer control over its placement). Note that the arrow will turn into a white hand when you move it over the photo. That's normal.

You'll also know you've selected the photo and not the frame that contains it by where the "grab handles" (or "bounding box", to use Adobe's terminology) show when you click on the photo--if they're outside the frame but match the original dimensions of the photo before it was placed and cropped, you've selected the photo and not the frame.

Another helpful visual cue is that if you click and hold the mouse button down, any areas of the photo that extend beyond the frame's borders will show and will be semi-opaque; it's meant to be an aid in helping the user move the photo where they want it without having to repeatedly click and drag.

I hope that made sense, but more importantly I hope it helps!

I also wish I had some advice to offer on the locking-up issue, but that doesn't happen to me very often. The few times things have gone wrong, the program just crashed and I had to start over. :(


Edit: a little more in-depth, but hopefully not more confusing!

Further edit: clarity.

i guess mine isn't. that stuff all works fine as long as it is an object just sitting on the page. once i have a frame around it, i can't drag it, even though i appear to have it selected. (command click through the various boxes.) i guess this is what i get for not using layers. (and yes, i am in the right layer.)
anyway, i kinda worked around it by dragging the frame off, then doing what i have to do.
what i would also like to know, tho, is why the hell i can't figure out how to do a gradient. i can get a gray one, but i can't seem to open a new color gradient swatch. help says pick it off the menu, but i don't know what menu they mean. a written menu? i just see buttons.
oy.

I'm not sure what to do about that.

The second one, though, I might be able to help with. If you go to the Swatches palette (or click the Swatches tab if it's docked at the edge of the screen), there should be a tiny, round button with a right-pointing arrow at the upper left corner of the palette. If you click that, a pop-up menu appears and "New Gradient Swatch..." is the third item on the list. When that's selected, a dialog box opens with a "Gradient Ramp" bar at the bottom with two sliders at either end; you can click on the sliders to define their colors however you like and use the diamond icon above the bar to set the midpoint. It should work on any box, not just ones drawn with the Gradient Tool.

There may be some slight differences in how it works for us; I'm on a Mac using InDesign CS2.

I apologize profusely if I'm explaining things you already know, too--I'm just trying to make sure the explanation sounds coherent. :)

thank you so much. i am pretty good at figuring things out with shear doggedness. but there are some pretty well hidden things in this sucker. kept checking the help, and for the life of me couldn't find the damn menu.
million thanks.

or at least, figured a way around it- bring it up in the stacking order. :shrug: it's nice to get to the bottom of stuff, but as long as i can get around it, oh well.