How to change MM to Inches & changing UK to US dictionary in InDesign?
Overview
Daniel Scott
Founder of Bring Your Own Laptop & Chief Instructor
instructorI discovered the world of design as an art student when I stumbled upon a lab full of green & blue iMac G3’s. My initial curiosity around using the computer to create ‘art’ developed into a full-blown passion, eventually leading me to become a digital designer and founder of Bring Your Own Laptop.
Sharing and teaching are a huge part of who I am. As a certified Adobe instructor, I've had the honor of winning multiple Adobe teaching awards at their annual MAX conference. I see Bring Your Own Laptop as the supportive community I wished for when I was first starting out and intimidated by design. Through teaching, I hope to bring others along for the ride and empower my students to bring their stories, labors of love, and art into the world.
True to my Kiwi roots, I've lived in many places, and currently, I reside in Ireland with my wife and kids.
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Hi, everyone. In this video, before we get started making this lovely flier, we need to adjust our measurements. By default, often InDesign comes with the measurement of 'Picas'. It just means that whenever-- you see this box at the top here, it's in 'Millimeters', yours might be set to 'Picas'. When I make a rectangle, all the measurements are set to that. Or if you're just switching from Imperial to Metric.
So, let's go and change it. On a Mac, it's under 'InDesign CC', down here to 'Preferences', and then, down to 'Units & Increments'. If you're on a PC, it's similar, it's under 'Edit', then 'Preferences' is down here, it will have 'Units & Increments'. So on a Mac, that's where I am. All you need to do here is, we're going to change our 'Horizontal'. It might be on 'Picas', and we're going to switch it to 'Millimeters'. We're going to do this course in 'Inches just because most of the people watching my videos are American based, but you can switch it to 'Millimeters. I'll show you a cool trick while you're working to interchange between the two.
The other thing we might do here is, if you're going from millimeters to inches you might want to change the default dictionary as well. So down here, where it says 'Dictionary', just make sure you're on the most relevant dictionary. I'm on 'English USA', you might have to switch yours to the one just up, which is 'UK English', or 'Chinese', whatever your dictionary is. Let's click 'OK'. You can see up here, that little box I showed you earlier is now in 'Inches'. When I try and draw a rectangle it comes up in 'Inches'.
Okay, quick easy short video. Let's go off and start making this flier from scratch.