Vertical Alignment & Text Frames

We go over changing your vertical alignment for your text in the InDesign training here at NPower. It’s a handy command if you want your text centered in your frame. However one of the things that has frustrated me over the years is that InDesign will change your alignment back to Top if you have a non-rectangle frame.

This means any custom frame shape, corner effects, etc. Well the folks over at the InDesign Docs blog had a great post on getting around this. Turns out if you increase the Inset Spacing enough, it’s revert back to your vertical alignment setting. This is due to the inset spacing having enough room to revert back to a rectangle shape. Unfortunately this means it only works if you’re using corner effects, not custom shapes like an ellipse.

Their other recommendation is to create 2 frames, one rectangle and one custom. The rectangle would contain your text and have vertical alignment applied but no stroke. Apply your stroke to the custom frame or shape and place it on top of the text frame. Then Group them.

While it works, I think it’s a pain. I might as well be back to using PageMaker. Oh well, maybe CS10 will address this.