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Eye-drop text to copy attributes


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There is no direct equivalent to that tool yet, but you can achieve a similar effect as @Przemysław suggested by using a text style.

  1. Select the text that is formatted the way you want it.
  2. Click the "Create character style" button along the bottom of the Text Styles studio panel.
  3. In the "Create Character Style" window that appears, give it a meaningful name and click "OK".
  4. Select the text you want to match to that style
  5. In the Text Styles studio panel, select the style that you created in steps 2-3.
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This is a heartbreaker of an omission. I've been copying text formatting with an Eyedropper for as long as I remember. Quark? Pagemaker? I think so.

Creating multiple text styles for every document seems like a mess, and my first attempts to do so -- to format an imported PDF -- did not yield consistent results. In InDesign I only go to the trouble of setting up character and paragraph styles if I'm working on a very long document, or a periodical... and sometimes not even then.

A heartbreaker.

PS: I remember being almost giddy a couple years ago when I learned that in InDesign you could "load" the Eyedropper with a text style and then go through your document highlighting text with the Eyedropper to apply that style.

 

 

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25 minutes ago, Saint Louis Moe said:

This is a heartbreaker of an omission. I've been copying text formatting with an Eyedropper for as long as I remember. Quark? Pagemaker? I think so.

Creating multiple text styles for every document seems like a mess, and my first attempts to do so -- to format an imported PDF -- did not yield consistent results. In InDesign I only go to the trouble of setting up character and paragraph styles if I'm working on a very long document, or a periodical... and sometimes not even then.

A heartbreaker.

PS: I remember being almost giddy a couple years ago when I learned that in InDesign you could "load" the Eyedropper with a text style and then go through your document highlighting text with the Eyedropper to apply that style.

 

 

I use that tool ALL THE TIME so it is going to be a slow down when using Publisher. I hope the developers have it on the to-do for the next release.

 

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19 hours ago, fde101 said:

There is no direct equivalent to that tool yet, but you can achieve a similar effect as @Przemysław suggested by using a text style.

  1. Select the text that is formatted the way you want it.
  2. Click the "Create character style" button along the bottom of the Text Styles studio panel.
  3. In the "Create Character Style" window that appears, give it a meaningful name and click "OK".
  4. Select the text you want to match to that style
  5. In the Text Styles studio panel, select the style that you created in steps 2-3.

It's very un-productive to create styles for every occasion you need to copy attributes quickly. I'm guessing you've never used the tool in real life production work.

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5 hours ago, redlik said:

It's very un-productive to create styles for every occasion you need to copy attributes quickly.

In most cases, it is best to use text styles in the first place for all of the text so that there is no need for this.  For most of what I have done with Publisher so far I prefer that way of working.  Instead of applying attributes directly to the text, I define a structured set of text styles and use those across the board.  For smaller, simpler things I might not have done that - but then I don't really need to copy the attributes in them very often, so this hasn't really been a problem for me.

I recognize that sometimes you might need to work a different way and that the "format painter" type of tool can be a big time saver.  For now, Publisher does not have that feature, and I was trying to offer you a work-around that can be used in the interim until the developers reach the point of implementing such a tool.  Hoping also that they eventually do get that in there, but for myself, it isn't nearly as big of a priority as a few other things that are currently missing or ill-behaved.

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4 hours ago, fde101 said:

In most cases, it is best to use text styles in the first place for all of the text so that there is no need for this.  For most of what I have done with Publisher so far I prefer that way of working.  Instead of applying attributes directly to the text, I define a structured set of text styles and use those across the board.  For smaller, simpler things I might not have done that - but then I don't really need to copy the attributes in them very often, so this hasn't really been a problem for me.

I recognize that sometimes you might need to work a different way and that the "format painter" type of tool can be a big time saver.  For now, Publisher does not have that feature, and I was trying to offer you a work-around that can be used in the interim until the developers reach the point of implementing such a tool.  Hoping also that they eventually do get that in there, but for myself, it isn't nearly as big of a priority as a few other things that are currently missing or ill-behaved.

It all comes down to everybody's needs, my friend. I use styles for longer pieces such as magazines, books, menus etc. but for a quick one page jobs like flyers, poster setting up styles is not really a good solution. But thnx for suggestions anyway. 

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3 hours ago, redlik said:

I use styles for longer pieces such as magazines, books, menus etc. but for a quick one page jobs like flyers, poster setting up styles is not really a good solution.

Agreed - that's about the sum of it.

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  • 9 months later...
1 hour ago, andrea k said:

Is there an update on this yet? can we eyedrop text styles yet?

Hello @andrea k and welcome to the forum.

The answer is no. The eyedropper only works with colours.

Cheers,
d.

Affinity Designer 1 & 2   |   Affinity Photo 1 & 2   |   Affinity Publisher 1 & 2
Affinity Designer 2 for iPad   |   Affinity Photo 2 for iPad   |   Affinity Publisher 2 for iPad

Windows 11 64-bit - Core i7 - 16GB - Intel HD Graphics 4600 & NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M
iPad pro 9.7" + Apple Pencil

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 4/6/2020 at 2:51 PM, dominik said:

The answer is no. The eyedropper only works with colours.

Hello, anyone knows if this function (not necessarily with the same tool) may be considered by the developpers ? Or is it just a big no ?

I've been working for more than 10 years on indesign and this style sampling thing is something really useful.

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2 hours ago, Pizzafrisbee said:

Hello, anyone knows if this function (not necessarily with the same tool) may be considered by the developpers ? Or is it just a big no ?

Hello @Pizzafrisbee, welcome to the forum.

I don't think it is a big NO. It's just that is not there yet and we do not know, if it's in the planning. It is somehow obvious that this kind of eyedropper is a practical function. But Serif generally does not give hints on what is planned an when. Except for new features that are part of the beta versions to be tested.

I made the observation that they recently seem to spend a round on bug fixes before working on new features.

Cheers,
d.

Affinity Designer 1 & 2   |   Affinity Photo 1 & 2   |   Affinity Publisher 1 & 2
Affinity Designer 2 for iPad   |   Affinity Photo 2 for iPad   |   Affinity Publisher 2 for iPad

Windows 11 64-bit - Core i7 - 16GB - Intel HD Graphics 4600 & NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M
iPad pro 9.7" + Apple Pencil

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I am a Styles fiend and set them up for just about every document I do, but then I'll use the Eyedropper to quickly apply them around longer journals - particularly when I want to apply a Character Style on top of a Paragraph Style. I view them as two complimentary tools to allow me to complete the same process.

I must say though that I am very impressed that Styles come through on IDML imports - a huge time saver. :)

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8 hours ago, Richard786 said:

I must say though that I am very impressed that Styles come through on IDML imports - a huge time saver. :)

I was impressed by this too. But I noticed when I tried it that Publisher will create a second identical style the next time you paste the same style in from InDesign. Maybe this has changed over the last couple months though.

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15 hours ago, Jeremy Bohn said:

I was impressed by this too. But I noticed when I tried it that Publisher will create a second identical style the next time you paste the same style in from InDesign. Maybe this has changed over the last couple months though.

I've not noticed that myself, Jeremy, but once I've got everything into Pub I tend not to go back to the InDesign file. Would it help to re-assign text in the "new" style to the "old" one (or vice versa) and then delete the duplicate style from the styles pallet?

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  • 4 weeks later...

This was a huge blow to me too, and I came here with high hopes. In my fury to find a better solution I discovered that you can select multiple sections of text (within the same text frame only) while holding Ctrl. You can then apply a text style all at once. 

Not the best, but should save a bit of time on larger documents.

Screenshot_14.png

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  • 2 weeks later...

While I agree the eyedropper would be great... in the mean time, an alternative is to create a Style and assign a Keyboard Shortcut to the Style.

Once the Shortcut has been assigned, I find this is just as quick and probably quicker in some cases where that Task is repetitive.

Edited by nealmeldrum
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  • 2 weeks later...

Really desperately missing the eye dropper tool indeed. Just adding another voice to the list. I can't count how often I use that in indesign; and agreed with the above that it's a crucial part of working with styles.

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