Publisher: How to copy from locked layers

[Ken Hjulstrom]

When constructing a document, I often have a need to access a prior version of a similar document (magazine issues) to grab a piece of text, a value from a layer's "Transform" settings, check the color value of text, etc.  I typically lock all of the layers of a magazine document just prior to generating the press-ready PDF, to reduce the chances of that document being accidentally edited by me afterward, but I've found that locking the layers not only prevent me from making changes (this is why I locked the layers in the first place), but the locking also prevents me from copying text or related parameters.  Is there a way to lock layers but still allow for copying contents and properties?  Currently, I have to unlock the appropriate layer to access the data, and then do a number of "undo" operations to restore the document back to its prior state.

A related question is why, after using "undo" to undo all of the unlocks (and possible other operations) that I've done, am I still prompted with the "Save | Cancel" dialog when attempting to close the document.  I can understand why this dialog would appear if, instead of undo-ing my way out of all of my changes, I explicitly relocked the layers (instead of undoing the "unlocks"), since this would introduce changes, but it would seem to me that undoing all changes made since opening the document, the document's "dirty flag" would have been turned off, allowing me to close the document without being alerted that the "document has been changed".  Is something going on "under the covers", such as autosaving, that is causing this to occur?

Thanks,

Ken

 

[thomaso]

Workaround: If you select objects in the Layers panel you can copy them … but you can't select text of locked text layers.

A possibly unexpected/unwanted question "Save the document?" when closing a document is known for a some situations.