Grouping, locking, and duplicating objects, Group or ungroup objects, Lock or unlock objects – Adobe InDesign CS4 User Manual
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USING INDESIGN CS4
Frames and objects
Grouping, locking, and duplicating objects
Group or ungroup objects
You can combine several objects into a group so that they are treated as a single unit. You can then move or transform
the objects without affecting their individual positions or attributes. For example, you might group the objects in a logo
design so that you can move and scale the logo as one unit.
Grouped object
Groups can also be nested—grouped into subgroups within larger groups. Use the Selection, Direct Selection, and
Group Selection tools to select different levels of a nested group’s hierarchy.
If you’re working with a stack of overlapping objects, and you group some objects that aren’t adjacent in the stacking
order, the selected objects will be pulled together in the stacking order, right behind the frontmost selected object. (For
example, when objects are stacked as A, B, C, D from front to back, and you group B and D together, the stacking order
becomes A, B, D, C.) If you group objects that exist on different named layers, all of the objects move to the frontmost
layer on which you selected an object. Also, the objects you select must either be all locked or all unlocked.
1 Select multiple objects to be grouped or ungrouped. Selecting part of an object (for example, an anchor point) will
group the entire object.
2 Choose either Object > Group or Object > Ungroup.
If you’re not sure if an object is part of a group, select it using the Selection tool and look at the Object menu. If the
Object > Ungroup command is available, you’ve selected a group.
See also
Select nested or overlapping objects
Lock or unlock objects
You can use the Lock Position command to specify that you don’t want certain objects to move in your document. As
long as an object is locked, it cannot be moved, although you can still select it and change other attributes such as color.
Locked objects stay locked when a document is saved, closed, and then reopened.
1 Select the object or objects that you want to lock in place.
2 Do one of the following:
•
To lock the objects, choose Object > Lock Position.
•
To unlock the objects, choose Object > Unlock Position.
You can also use the Layers panel to lock one or more layers. This locks the positions of all objects on a layer, and also
prevents them from being selected.
Updated 18 June 2009