This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Flowing text
QuarkXPress provides two ways to flow text through text boxes and pages—using the automatic text box or linking boxes manually. The text in a series of linked boxes is referred to as a story, and you can perform operations such as spell check and search and replace on a story rather than an entire layout.
Using the automatic text box
When you import or enter text into the automatic text box, QuarkXPress automatically adds enough pages to contain all the text (Figure 4.5). The automatic text box is generally used to quickly flow the text of longer publications such as books. To create one, check Automatic Text Box in the New Project or New Layout dialog box. The automatic text box is placed within the specified margin and column guides on the default master page.
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Figure 4.5 At left, the automatic text box is placed within the margin and column guides specified in the New Layout or New Project dialog box. When you import or enter text, pages are automatically added to contain all the text.
You can also create an automatic text box on a master page later. Display the master page (Page > Display) and select the Linking tool 
. Click the broken link icon in the upper-left corner, then click a text box on the page (Figure 4.6). To flow text through a spread, do this on both pages.
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Figure 4.6 An intact link icon on the master page indicates an automatic text box.
Linking and unlinking
To flow text from box to box, you need to link boxes with the Linking tool . The Linking tool is in a pop-out of the Text Content tool 
on the Tools palette. You can only link boxes that are already text boxes—if you want to link boxes drawn with a no-content box tool, click on them first with the Text Content tool. In addition to linking text boxes, you can link any text container to any other text container, including linking text boxes to text paths and linking text paths to each other. You cannot link to boxes (or other text containers) that already contain text. Text in a series of linked items is referred to as a chain. To link text boxes:
- Create the text boxes you want in the text chain.
- Select the first box.
Using the Linking tool, click the text boxes in the order you want the text to flow (Figure 4.7).
Figure 4.7 To link text boxes, click the Linking tool in the order you want the text to flow.
- If you need to reroute links—for example if you accidentally click the wrong box—Shift+click the Linking tool.
- When you’re finished linking boxes, select another tool.
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If you delete a text box in a chain, the text will flow through the remaining boxes. You can break box links using the Unlinking tool 
, which is next to the Linking tool in the pop-out of the Text Content tool (Figure 4.8). When you break a text box link, all subsequent links in the chain are broken as well.
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Figure 4.8 At left, Shift+click the Linking tool to reroute links. At right, click the Unlinking tool to break text box links.