Why re-placing the text loses your styling
When you place a file or paste over a story, InDesign replaces the paragraphs themselves, and the paragraph styles, character styles and local overrides you applied go with them. On a long document that means restyling every page after every round of revisions.
DriveSync works the other way round: it keeps your paragraphs and changes the text inside them.
Check the formatting setting
- On the Connected tab, press Import Options… and open Paragraph.
- Make sure Formatting is set to Text only — never touch layout styling (recommended).This is the default. The other choice, “Import the Doc’s character formatting too”, also brings in the writer’s bold, italic and links — which means Google’s formatting reaches your layout.
- Close the dialog, then press Sync on the file or Sync all.
What changes, and what doesn’t
Updated by a sync
- Text in paragraphs the writer edited
- Paragraphs the writer added, with the style you choose for new paragraphs
- Paragraphs the writer deleted, which are removed
Left exactly as it is
- Paragraph styles, character styles and local overrides
- Spacing, including blank paragraphs you added for rhythm
- Images you placed yourself: a paragraph holding one is skipped, with a warning
- Images DriveSync placed on the first sync, which it leaves alone afterwards
Paragraphs are matched by their content, not their position. If a writer adds a sentence near the top of the Doc, the paragraphs below still line up with their own styling, instead of every heading shifting down onto the paragraph above it.
The safety check on big changes
Occasionally a sync would replace almost everything, usually because a frame is linked to the wrong Doc. When a story has at least eight paragraphs and fewer than one in five of them match the incoming Doc, DriveSync stops before changing anything. It shows how many paragraphs match and how many would be removed, and you decide whether to continue.
If you weren’t expecting that warning, cancel and check which Doc the frame is linked to. Find frame on the Connected tab shows you.
Confirm that nothing moved
Turn on Verify styling after every sync on the Settings tab. DriveSync records each paragraph’s style, font, size, leading, alignment, spacing and indents before and after the sync, and reports anything that changed.
Every sync is also a single undo step, so Edit Undo takes back the whole sync if you need it.
Make copy changes in the Doc
Text flows one way, from Google to InDesign. If you fix a typo in InDesign, the next sync replaces it with the Doc’s version. Make copy changes in the Google Doc, or ask the writer to, and let the sync bring them across.
Know when there’s something to sync
On the Settings tab, set Watch Google for changes every to a few minutes. Edited files are then marked changed in Google on the Connected tab. Watching never syncs on its own, so nothing reflows while you’re working on a spread — you choose when to press Sync.
Auto-sync every, on the same tab, does pull changes in by itself. Leave it on never unless that’s what you want.