A few newbie questions about InDesign CS

I've recently gotten the entire Creative Suite Premium, and need to put together a manual-like book for private use, which will be a great way to get started with InDesign. I always used CorelDraw, and still use it, but with all the hullabaloo about InDesign, and a great increase of AI and PDF files we've been receiving at work, we had to get ourselves the Creative Suite.

Anyway, here are a few things I can't seem to find out how to do, while in CorelDraw they're too easy:
- setting text or images as "symbols" (like the kind of symbols Macromedia Fireworks and CorelDraw use) to use instances of in the document. Is there no way other than taking copies of a placed file and reusing that? With a symbol, changing one instance, makes all instances change (great for book titles, or if a logo needs to be changed, among many many other things).
- using a master layer on a document so all pages have the same basic look. In CorelDraw, I can create a layer that will be used on all pages, so they will all contain a certain graphic, or text, or background color/image in exactly the same spot, and by changing the master layer, all pages will see the same change. It's much easier to do that, than to copy and paste it onto each page, especially if something needs to be changed after 15 pages have been finished.

I think that's it as I've found the answers to my other questions by looking at "old" topics.

TIA,
Roland