The Copy Appearances option in the QuickBuild menu allows you to copy any (or all) Object States of one object and paste them onto a similar object or group of objects. This is particularly useful for creating a consistent look and feel to a publication; for example, you will want buttons to look the same on every page.
The standard Windows Copy feature and the Duplicate button in Opus will copy the whole object. For example, if you copy an object named Button 1 and use the Paste button or Duplicate button you will have get a new object named Button 1 (2), that is, an exact copy of the object. The Copy Appearances feature however will only copy the selected Object States of the object and not the whole object. For example, if you use the Copy Appearances feature for an object named Button 1 and then use the Paste Appearances feature on an object named Next Page, the new object will still be called Next Page but the Object States (i.e. the appearance) will be the same as those in the object Button 1. This feature is therefore useful when you have created and named your objects and you want to quickly make sure that they all have the same states.
Note:
This option is Object Type specific, in other words, you can only paste Object States to the same type of object as was originally copied with the Copy Appearances option. For example, if you copy a Button object, you can only paste the appearances onto other Button objects.
Create an object and change its Object States as required – see Explaining Object States for more information.
Select the object whose appearance you want to copy – the bounding box will surround the object.
Select Copy Appearances from the QuickBuild menu – this will open the Copy Appearance dialog box containing the Object States for the type of object you have selected.
Note:
Each object has a different set of Object States, so the list in the Copy Appearance dialog will also be different, depending on which object you select.
Tick the checkboxes beside the Object States you want to copy for the selected object. By default, all states are selected and will therefore be copied. Click on the OK button to copy the appearances or the Cancel button to close the dialog without copying the states.
All the states you have selected in the Copy Appearance dialog are saved in an Appearance Clipboard (i.e. a memory storage area) and the PasteAppearance option in the QuickBuild menu is enabled. You can now paste the states onto other objects – see Paste Appearance feature for more information.
Note:
You can only paste to objects of the SAME type. In other words, if the object selected is a Button object, you can only paste to other Button objects; if it is a Text object, you can only past to other Text objects, and so on.
Repeat steps 1 to 5 for each object whose appearance you want to copy. This will overwrite the current appearance information held in the Appearance Clipboard (which can only contain one object information at a time) and replace it with the new object’s appearance information.
Note:
Opus will only remember the Object States of the last object copied (i.e. the Appearance Clipboard works in a similar way to the standard Windows Copy Clipboard). However, at any time you can re-select an object and use the Copy Appearance option again when you need to paste an object’s appearance onto any new objects you create in your publication.
Note:
As well as the Copy Appearances option, the QuickBuild menu contains a Copy Appearance Elements option that allows you to copy bits of an objects appearance, such as its rotation, texture or border style – see Copy Appearance Elements for more information.
Also note, some objects you can add to a page do not have different Object States, such as the DocView object and therefore the Copy Appearances option is not available for these types of objects.