Hello, my name is Mike Collins. In this lesson, you'll learn about how to import text and thread text frames in Adobe InDesign. Let's open the application and create a new document. We'll begin with a box of text in a text frame. We'll create this here at the top and let's import some text from the type menu to fill with placeholder text. Text within any frame can be either dependent or independent of other text frames. We've already talked in another lesson about how to make text flow from one frame into another by connecting the frames called threading text. But now let's go into more detail in this lesson about how to link text frames to each other. A text frame has both an import on the upper left side and an output on the lower right corner. That connect your text to another text frame and show where your text begins and ends in each frame. When a frame is linked to another frame, arrows will appear in the port. Let's go ahead and create a second text frame just below onto the side. Now, if we take the first text frame and reduce the size, we can see the small red plus sign in the output telling us that there is more text than can be placed in the text box and would flow into another frame if one were available. The extra text that is not visible in the current text frame is called overset text that would thread to the next frame. You can see how all your text frames are connected in your document by selecting the view icon menu at the top of your page, extras, and show text threads. To add a new frame to the text thread, let's create a new third text frame here below the other two. Now that we have overset text in the first text frame, let's thread it to the second text frame. By selecting the text frame, selecting on the import, now we see we have the loaded text icon. If now we either choose the out port of the first text frame or the text within it, and you can also see that as we place it over the overset text, this loaded text icon turns into a chain or infinity symbol indicating there is overset text that will thread to the next text frame. We'll select the text, and you can see it now flows into the second text frame, and we can see the relationship that's showing the text thread. Now we can add another frame inside our series of threaded frames. To do this, select the out port where you wanna add the frame here in the lower right, then add the frame you want to add and release your mouse, and now you can see these text frames are connected even though there's not text in them threading from one to the other. The new frame will now be threaded into the series of linked frames. You can always unthread text frames to break the connection between them. The text will remain in the first text frame, and any text that does not fit inside of the frame will become overset text. Let's reduce the size of this first text frame, and now we can see the text flows from the first to second, and now reduce the size of the second text frame, and we can see now the text is flowing from the first to the second to the third text frames. To unthread a text frame, go to the Select tool and double -click on the in or out port to break the connection between the frames. Now you can see the text has returned to the second text frame, but it's still overset text because it's not threading through to the third text frame that we created earlier. We'll reduce the size of the second text frame to make sure that it is overset text. You can also select either the out port of the first frame or the in port of the second frame. You can also delete or cut a text frame, but still leave the text in the thread. As you delete or add text frames, the threaded text will remain and maintain their connection to each other. This is done by selecting the frame or frames you want to cut with the Selection tool. Select Edit, Cut, and the frame will be deleted, while the text will now flow into the next frame or become overset text if there's not enough room for the complete text in the previous text frame. We'll go back and undo that. You can also delete a threaded text frame by selecting the frame and click Delete or Backspace, and we'll bring it back again. As you decrease or increase the size of any text frame, the text will automatically thread or adjust to fit into the first text frame, and you can delete the extra text frames. If you create a new text frame, you can add the overset text from the original text frame to the new one. We'll delete our text frames from now and create another text frame at the beginning here, and a second text frame. You can link empty text frames before you even type or import text into them, so the text will automatically flow from one text frame to another. Click our Selection tool, and we can click the output of the first text frame and the second text frame, and you can see now they're linked to each other. Adobe InDesign will automatically create a text box when you import it into the application from another Word file. Let's delete our existing text frames and select File, Place, choose some text, and place the text frame wherever you like on the document page. InDesign will now automatically create a text frame and flow your text into it. If there's more text than can fit into the single -page text frame, the overset text will flow out of it, so we can see with the small red plus sign at the bottom right. Click on this, and now we see we have our overset text. Go to the Pages manual. On the upper right -hand side of your screen, and click on the small plus sign on the bottom to create a new page. That connects the text between the two pages. Now, this option works fine if there's only enough text to fill two pages, but if the text is much longer and will finish many pages, InDesign has another better option to automatically create text frames called AutoFlow. Let's look at the relationship of this text frame, one page to another. We can see now there's more text that can fit into two of these pages. Let's go back by undoing what we did. We'll zoom in again to fit the page in the window, and make sure we can see the entire page. This time, select File, Lace, and select the text you want to import into Adobe InDesign. Now, when you place your cursor, wherever you like on the document page, press and hold down the Shift key, and you'll see the cursor now has changed to a squiggly line with an arrow. Now, when you position your text on the first text frame, release the Shift key, and you'll see that Adobe InDesign has now automatically created as many pages as were needed for all of your imported text to flow through instead of you having to manually create new pages for each new text frame. Notice that this was a document originally created with facing pages, but the same process will import text and create as many not facing pages as are needed if that option is selected. Now you've learned how to thread text frames, use AutoFlow in Adobe InDesign. Stay tuned for the next lesson, where I will show you how to use special characters and the Story Editor in Adobe InDesign. Thanks for watching.
