Now what if you want individual text columns, for example maybe I want a sidebar with some extra text or something like this on my first page. Well, here is what I am going to do. I am going to pan over to my left and how I am doing this is I am just holding down my Spacebar and that gives me InDesign's Hand Tool and then I can just grab my page and drag it in any direction that I want.

So I am just going to move over to the left-hand side and I have this expanse of empty space way over here on the left side. I also have some space over on the right-hand side of my page by the way, this is called the Pasteboard and I can use the Pasteboard when I want to store some extra graphics or some extra text or set something up like a sidebar which I am going to do with you right now. So I am going to do this in a slightly different way.

When I imported my text, I got that loaded icon and then I just single-clicked because I had the master text frame. Here is another way to import text. I am going to go to my File menu and then all the way down to Place and this time I am looking for Site Types.doc, another Word file and I will click on Open, I get my loaded icon again with the few lines of text inside that document. I think that is so cool, but I don't have a text frame for this text.

Well Jeez, I guess I better click-and-drag to draw a text frame for that content. So there you go, you can dump text into an existing text frame, which was our master text frame or you can click-and-drag a text frame while you are importing the text, pretty cool stuff. Now, I got to show you how to thread text frames. What I mean by that is connect text frames together so that the text spills from one text frame into another text frame, into another text frame and on and on and on.

How do I do it? It's incredibly simple here in InDesign CS3. I have got my first text frame, I can see the tiny little red plus (+) inside this Box icon way down in the bottom right-hand corner of my text box. We remember what that means, it means that there is more text than this text box can handle. So I am going to single-click on it and golly I get another loaded icon. What do I do with this guy?

Well, I guess I will draw another text frame and now I get this happening and there is still another red icon. So I will single-click again and click-and-drag another text box. I will get my Pages palette out of the way here. You see what's happening here. So the text is going from box number 1 to box number 2 to box number 3. Now how do you know that the text is actually going in that order? Well check this out. I am going to go to my View menu and then I am going to head down to Show Text Threads and I actually get these blue lines connecting each of my text frames together. Incredible.

This is one of the things I love about InDesign, threading text is so simple. What happens you ask, if I take a text frame in the middle and change its size? Well check this out; I am just going to drag on these little handles that appear on all four sides and in all four corners of each of my text frames and check this out. The text in the next text frame just simply reflows, it just simply readjusts. So you can see TV's Dead is now at the top of this text frame. I make my text frame a little bit taller in the middle and it back fills back into this center text frame. So that's the idea. I have this connection here and the text just flows from one frame into another frame, into another frame.

Now what if I decide that I no longer want this center text frame. Well, I will make sure that it's highlighted with my Black Arrow Tool, and I will just press my Delete key, that gets rid of it. And where did TV's Dead wind up? He is way over in what was the third text frame. So if I click back on my first text frame, you can see that InDesign is smart enough to keep the connection, to keep the text frames from breaking apart, pretty awesome. Now that's cool enough as it is. But check this out. There is this weird seemingly useful, its white box way up in the top left-hand corner of each of your text frames. In fact, you will have one in the top left and you will also have one in the bottom right.

How I always explain these two little guys is I think of them as the input and output jacks on my home stereo. So in other words, this little guy is the output jack which spills into another text frames input jack. So I am going to single-click on this guy here, I get another loaded icon. In other words I can actually thread backwards. How cool is that? I have never seen a page layout program that will actually let me thread backwards.

So I can go forwards to the right and backwards to the left, pretty cool. Now, probably much like myself, you have a pile of text frames. Here is what I will get you to do. Delete a few of them until you are down to just two text frames. So I am back to something like this. I have got to show you one more quick thing here related to threading your text frames. I mentioned that you have the output stereo jack on your text frame down in the bottom right and the input stereo jack on your text frame in the top left. Check this out though. I am going to double-click on my output jack and that breaks my text link.

So if you ever want to interrupt or stop your text link, just double-click on that little output guy. To reestablish the link, I will just single-click on them, I get another loaded icon. As you have seen already, I could click-and-drag a new text frame. However, I am just going to single-click inside my existing text frame and voila, things are back the way they were.

One final thing to show you, I am going to go back to my first text frame and what I want to do is finally interrupt this text flow with a new text frame between these two guys. So I am going to click on the first guy, single-click on his output jack and I get another loaded icon. You must be getting sick of seeing these loaded icons by now. However, I will click-and-drag another text frame and look at that. Now I just interrupted my text flow with a brand new text frame that sits between the two originals. Awesome stuff.