How to share your InDesign files with others by using package document.

Hi there, in this video we're going to make a nice little zip file that we can send to people, and inside that zip file we have the InDesign file, plus all the links, and fonts, and images, all ready to go, so I can send it off to my colleagues so they can start working on the file, or it might be that I'm sending it to myself to my home computer, to start working on it, or I might just be packaging it all up to archive it, and take it off my machine so that I can get on to the next job. Let's look at this packaging InDesign files ready for other people, in this video.

To share our InDesign files, we need to use the 'Package' feature. So let's go to 'File', 'Package'. Make sure it's saved first. Leave all of this, click 'Package'. Ignore 'Printing Instructions', nobody uses this. It's meant to be for notes that you gave to your printer. "Contact me if the printer is ready." But you'd be doing that by email, not sure if anybody uses that. 'Create Package Folder', this is going to be an actual folder that's going to group everything, and stick it in. I'm going to put mine on my 'Desktop', in my 'InDesign Class Files'. The name of it, I'm going to give mine a different name, I'm going to call mine 'Green at Heart Flyer - Packaged Document'. 'Packaged Files', that's better. We're going to leave all of these ticked, and we'll look at them all when we're finished.

Let's click 'Package'. It says, "Do not share fonts, it's illegal." But we need to share the fonts, because we paid for them. So we ignore that, it's a gray area. So let's jump to our 'Desktop'. And you can see, there is my 'Class' folder and there is that folder that's been made, 'Packaged Files’, so let's see what's in here. Let's go inside, and there's a bunch. The InDesign file is the main thing. That is the bit where I'm going to send it off to one of my colleagues, and they're going to start working on it. They're going to double click the 'indd' file, the InDesign file, and that's what's going to open it up, and they're going to be able to start working on it.

A PDF there is just for visual, just to kind of get people like a little quick visual without having to open up the InDesign file to see what it is. You don't technically need that, they're just helpful. Same with this file here, the 'idml' file is just helpful. Say you're sending it to Jeff, and Jeff is going to try and open it, but he's using a super old version of InDesign. It means that he might try and open 'indd' and it just comes up with lots of error, saying "No way, Jose, my version's too old," or too new. He can open up that version. Will there be any problems? Probably not, if it's a simple document. If you're doing some hard core animated interactiveness, then maybe, but we're not at the moment, so it should all work out fine.

The important things are these 'Font folders' and 'Links'. These are really important. The 'Instructions', we kind of ignore that. So I'm going to delete it, we don't write anything in there, it's meant to be printer instructions, tell them what to do, how to contact you. So 'Fonts', you can see here, there was that-- remember that warning that said, "Hey, you sure you can share these fonts? Be careful, check your licenses," and you should. But this is how to get people a document and the fonts that are used in it, so it doesn't come up with font adherence. So we'll send these to them.

And the 'Links' 'Links' are just considered-- you can see, here is the logo, and this graphic I've used in here. So all of these are super important. So if I adjust it in InDesign file, it's going to open, but it's going to say "Hey, hello, I'm missing the fonts." "Hey, hello, I'm missing all the images." So you want to send all of this, so what you tend to do is this, that folder that got packaged -we were just inside there a second ago - is you right click it, and if you're on a Mac, you go to 'Compress', and if you're on a PC, I think there's a 'Send to Zip File'. You might have to look through your options. You're looking for a zipped or compressed folder. Click this, and see this zip folder, that can be emailed. You can't email a folder, weirdly, but you can email the zip folder. Or it may be just backup, you're working in an agency, and you're trying to keep everything, you're closing it off, and you want to turn off your computer but you know that the images are all over the place, and just want this tidy little package that you can archive, and say "Job done, delete off my computer" is you package it up into a folder, send this one.

All right, my friends, that is how to package a document, and send it to people without having lots and lots of problems.