For a file to be managed, it must be added to an assignment file, exported from InDesign as InCopy content, or placed as InCopy content into InDesign. Managed files communicate both content status and ownership. With managed files, you can:

• Lock and unlock stories to help preserve file integrity.

• Notify InCopy users when the associated InDesign layout is outdated.

• Identify the user working on a file.

• Notify users when an InCopy content file is outdated, being used by someone, or available for editing. Notification methods include alert messages, frame icons, status icons in the Links panel, and status icons in the Assignments panel.

Read-only files

Once a content file becomes managed, it’s read-only to all users in the workflow at all times, except to the person who has checked it out. The software creates a lock file (*.idlk) when a user checks out a content file, giving that user exclusive editing control. Read-only files have the following characteristics:

• An InCopy user cannot manually format the text in it. However, if text has been assigned character or paragraph styles, an InDesign user can change the definition of those styles, thereby changing the formatting of the text even when the file is checked out to someone else. These style definition changes are reflected in the text once the InDesign user updates the file.

• In general, neither an InCopy nor InDesign user can change objects, such as text and applied styles, in locked InCopy content. Some objects, such as character and paragraph styles, are only used by the content. For example, you can’t change how a character style is applied to objects in locked content, but you can change the character style itself, thereby changing the appearance of the text.

• An InDesign user can change the margins and columns of the text content as well as the shape, location, and number of text frames the story occupies.

• An InDesign user can change the geometry and formatting of a graphics frame without checking out the graphic. An InCopy user cannot change a graphics frame or any formatting on the frame. However, both InDesign and InCopy users have to check out the graphics frame in order to modify the graphic itself (for example, to rotate or scale it).