Synchronization between InDesign and Writer

In the typical Naviga Writer + NCS Content newsroom, a print story that has been laid out is clean, edited and ready for publication. However, in some cases, it is necessary to continue editing a story after it has been placed on the InDesign page.

As a general rule, once a story is placed on the page, you will want to approach editing the story with caution. While text changes may be saved and synchronized in both directions, Naviga Writer does not store InDesign-specific text markup such as kerning, tracking, changes to point size, and style changes. If you send text changes from Naviga Writer to NCS Content, any InDesign-specific text markup done on the page WILL BE OVERWRITTEN. It is best practice to communicate with your page designer when editing a story that is placed on page; depending on the nature of the changes and the work that has already been done in InDesign, it might be better to make the text changes in InDesign rather than in Naviga Writer.

After a story is placed on an InDesign page, the page designer can make changes to the story's text and/or properties. However, these changes are not reflected in Naviga Writer in real time.

To see in Naviga Writer the latest changes made to a story in InDesign, click the "Update from NCS Content" button in the NCS Content plugin.

The integration service will check to see if updates have been made to the story in NCS Content. If updates are present, the following dialog will appear:

Click "Discard and Load Latest" to update the Naviga Writer document with the changes that were made to the article on the page. After the load is complete, you may continue editing the article. Clicking "Save" will send your changes to NCS Content as described in the previous section.

Items such as photos and fact boxes that may have been placed inline with the text in Naviga Writer will be moved to the top of the Article after you click "Discard and Load Latest." This does not affect the placement of the items on the InDesign page. It is simply not necessary for Naviga Writer to recalcuate the items' position within the text for print purposes, so rather than doing that calculation, Naviga Writer shifts the items to the top of the article.

If there are no changes pending when you click "Update from NCS Content," you will see the following indicator:

Editing a story's NCS Content properties

After the story has been sent to NCS Content, you may edit the properties in the NCS Content plug-in in Naviga Writer or in NCS Content. Changes to a story's properties will be reflected in both Naviga Writer and NCS Content.

NOTE: Editing properties of a print story in Naviga Writer is subject to the same restrictions as editing properties of a story in NCS Content. For example, if you are restricted from changing a story's properties after a story reaches a certain workflow level, those restrictions will apply in Naviga Writer and NCS Content.

In Writer, make the necessary changes and click Update. When you save the story, the changes will be saved to NCS Content.

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