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InDesign: Applying Multiple Paragraph Styles

InDesign Layout Essentials

Master Pages

Recurring layout elements like page numbers, headers, footers.

Paragraph Styles

Reusable type formatting that scales across long documents.

Frames & Threading

Text flows between frames — the heart of multi-column layout.

Object Styles

Reusable formatting for image frames, callout boxes, sidebars.

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InDesign can apply multiple, sequential Paragraph Styles for you. For example, it could apply a heading style, followed by a subhead, followed by a regular Paragraph. Here’s how to do it:

Using "Apply Next" to Apply Multiple Paragraph Styles

  1. Create all the Paragraph Styles you need for your sequence. For example: heading, subhead, and body text

  2. Edit the first style in the sequence (such as heading).

  3. Set the Next Style option to the style that comes second in the sequence. For example, the

    Heading’s Next Style would be subhead.

  4. Edit each style in the sequence, setting the appropriate Next Style. If you want to create a loop,

    Make sure the last style’s Next Style is set to the first style in the loop.

  5. After all styles are set, select the text in the InDesign document that you want to style.

  6. In the Paragraph Styles panel, Control–Click or Right–Click on the first style’s name (such as heading).

  7. In the menu that appears, choose Apply “My Style Name“ then Next Style.

Things to Keep in Mind:

InDesign assumes you only have one Paragraph per style. For example: You have one Paragraph of text for the heading, another for the subhead and another of body text. If you have multiple Paragraph s of body text, you won’t be able to create an endless loop to automatically style all your text. But you can select and style one text block (heading, subhead, body text) at a time.

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