View the workspace

Use the Zoom tool or the Zoom commands to magnify the size of documents.

• To zoom in, select the Zoom tool  and click the area you want to magnify. Each click magnifies the view to the next preset percentage, centering the display around the point you click. At maximum magnification, the center of the Zoom tool appears blank. To zoom out, hold down Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) and click the area you want to reduce. Each click reduces the view.
• To magnify to the next preset percentage, activate the window you want to view and choose View > Zoom In. To reduce the view to the previous preset percentage, choose View > Zoom Out.
• To set a specific magnification level, type or choose a level in the Zoom Level box in the application bar.

• To zoom in or out, press Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) while using the mouse scroll wheel or sensor.
• To magnify by dragging, select the Zoom tool and drag around the area you want to magnify.

Power zoom offers a quick way to scroll through your document pages. Using the grabber hand, you can use zoom in or out and scroll through your entire document. This feature is especially useful for long documents.

You must be in Layout view to use power zoom.

• Double-click the Zoom tool.
• Choose View > Actual Size.
• Type or choose a magnification level of 100 in the Zoom Level box in the application bar.

Focus on the desired area of your document by fitting pages and spreads within the active window and by scrolling the view.

• Choose View > Fit Page In Window.
• Choose View > Fit Spread In Window.
• Choose View > Entire Pasteboard.

You can easily adjust the degree to which pages or objects are centered in the document window. These techniques are also useful for navigating between pages.

InDesign makes it easy to jump from page to page in a document. For example, just as most web browsers provide Back and Forward buttons to navigate through pages you’ve visited, InDesign keeps track of the order in which you’ve viewed pages in a document.

You can open additional windows for the same document or for other InDesign documents. With additional windows, you can compare different spreads simultaneously, especially spreads that aren’t adjacent. You can also display different magnifications of the same page, so that you can work closely on details while watching how the changes affect the overall layout. In addition, you can display a master page in one window, and pages based on it in other windows, to see how editing the master page affects various parts of the document.

When you reopen the document, only the last-used window appears.

• To create a new window for the same document, choose Window > Arrange > New Window.
• To cascade or tile windows, choose Window > Arrange > Cascade to arrange all windows into a stack, with each window offset slightly. Or, choose Window > Arrange > Tile to display all windows equally without overlapping.
• To activate a window, click the window tab or title bar. Or, choose the name of the view in the Window menu. Multiple windows for a document are numbered in the order they were created.
• To close all windows for the active document, press Shift+Ctrl+W (Windows) or Shift+Command+W (Mac OS).
• To close all windows for all open documents, press Shift+Ctrl+Alt+W (Windows) or Shift+Command+Option+W (Mac OS).

Anti-aliasing smooths the jagged edges of type and bitmap images by softening the color transition between edge pixels and background pixels. Since only the edge pixels change, no detail is lost.

When display capabilities are insufficient to show text at a small size, InDesign displays the text as a dimmed bar. This behavior is called greeking type. Any type at or below the specified type size is replaced on‑screen with non-letterforms that act as placeholders.

To control whether to greek text and images when you scroll a document, open the Interface section of the Preferences dialog box, drag the Hand Tool slider to the desired level of performance versus quality, and then click OK.

You can perform simple math in any numerical edit box. For example, if you want to move a selected object 3 units to the right using the current measurement units, you don’t have to work out the new horizontal position—simply type +3 after the current value in the Transform panel.

Panels use the measurement system selected in the Preferences dialog box; however, you can specify values in another measurement instead.

Panels and dialog boxes use the measurement units and increments defined in the Edit > Preferences > Units & Increments (Windows) or InDesign > Preferences > Units & Increments (Mac OS) dialog box. However, you can specify values using any of the supported measurement units at any time by temporarily overriding the current preference settings.