Anchored Objects

[Scott_J._Silva@adobeforums.com]

InDesigns ability to anchor objects, such as boxes and images, to text is very powerful. But I have come across something that I can't seem to figure out. For example, lets say I have a sidebar feature that will have a gray box below a head and a few paragraphs of text. I will link the anchored box to the head and then set the anchored object prefs to custom, x relative to anchor mark and y relative to Line. Now that the box is anchored it moves up and down with the type as text is added or deleted.

This is the problem, the only way to get the gray box (could be color also) to not block the head/text in front of it is to set it to 100% black with a the transparency setting of X amount. Not the most efficient way to get around doing it, but I cannot find a way to make the anchored box behind the text. Any help appreciated.

[Fred_Goldman@adobeforums.com]

You should look into paragraph rules, you might be able to get the effect you're looking for by using paragraph rules. Don't forget you can set negative values in the paragraph rules options.

[Gerald_Singelmann@adobeforums.com]

In short: custom anchored objects always lie in front of the text they are anchored to. No way to send them to the back.
Dave gave more elaborate answers several times. I am sure you will be able to find them.

Two workarounds:
- either work with paragraph rules as Fred suggested
- or work with inline frames and solid (non-auto) leading.

Neither solution is ideal but both may give you the wanted effect.

Gerald

[Scott_J._Silva@adobeforums.com]

Thanks for the replies. I was aware of the other solutions (rules and inline frames), but I wanted to see if this option was a viable one. The other option would be to put the text into box, but for roundtripping and extracting of the text, I'm afraid that this wouldn't be the best solution.

Thanks for your help.

Scott

[Gerald_Singelmann@adobeforums.com]

A third one if you want to highlight the entire paragraph and if it is ok to always have the entire paragraph in one column: select the paragraph and convert into a table (which will have one cell). That cell can easily be coloured.

Gerald