Paste in place and Select commands in Layout by Zaweba

Pasting and selecting sound like the simplest things an app does, and in a busy layout they're among the most fiddly. Layout by Zaweba has a set of paste options and Select commands that take the guesswork out of putting things exactly where you want and picking out the right object in a crowded page.

Paste options

Paste in place puts a copied object back at exactly the position it came from. Copy a logo block from one page, go to another, paste in place, and it lands in the same spot. It works between documents too, so a folio or footer can be moved from last issue's file into this one without measuring.

Paste behind and paste in front put the object behind or in front of the current selection. That's the way to slip a coloured panel behind a block of text, or put a caption box over a picture, without fighting the stacking order afterwards.

Paste without formatting, Ctrl+Shift+V, brings in text without its original fonts and styles, so it takes on the style where you paste it. Text copied from an email or a web page is the classic case. Pasting it plain stops stray fonts creeping into your document and keeps your paragraph styles in charge.

Select all similar

Select all similar picks every object that matches the selected one by kind, fill, line, object style, size or layer. Suppose a client wants every red keyline changed to blue: select one, choose select all similar by line, and change them together. Or select every frame of a certain size on a page of thumbnails to resize them in one go.

Choosing the right match matters. By object style is the tidiest if you use object styles; by fill or line catches things that were formatted by hand.

Object Select

Object > Select has commands for stepping through what's on the page: the next object above or below, the container or content of a frame, and the next or previous object in a group. When frames are stacked, clicking keeps picking the top one; these commands let you reach the one underneath without moving anything out of the way.

Container and content are useful with pictures. The frame is the container and the picture inside is the content, and the command switches between them so you can resize the frame or move the picture as needed.

The content grabber

Picture frames have a content grabber, a handle in the middle that lets you drag the picture inside the frame without moving the frame. It's the quickest way to reposition a photo within a fixed crop, sliding a face into a better spot or getting the horizon level with the frame edge.

Paste and select slips

Pasting normally instead of in place, then nudging by eye, is the usual one; use paste in place whenever position matters. Pasting formatted text from elsewhere and then wondering why a strange font appears in preflight is another. And moving the frame when you meant to move the picture inside it happens to everyone; grab the content grabber, or use the content command, instead.

These commands in Layout by Zaweba are small, but they turn a lot of careful fiddling into single, exact steps.