This might be the best plug-in I have come across for Indesign yet. In short, you can style text or an object using the eyedropper tool without ever leaving current tool you have selected. You simply hold down the control & option keys and the eyedropper comes alive for you to pick up a style from another element. This is very useful when you do not have a style sheet set up for a certain text style, and want a new block of text to be exactly like another on your document. Select the text in a text box you would like to style, then hold down the option/control keys and you will see the eyedropper icon come up. You can then click on a body of text that is styled and the new text will pick up that style, the color, leading, font, size… everything.

It works the same way for objects as well, but you will need to be on either the Selection Tool or Direct Selection tool. With either tool selected, select an object, then hold down option/control and you can click on a styled object.

One thing you need to look out for is if another object is in front of the object you are trying to pick up the style from it will pick up the style from that top object, so you will have to rearrange the order of objects to get the one you are trying to select on top. On a side note a quick way to toggle through objects that are layered on top of each other is to choose your Selection tool, hold down the command key and continue to click on one area and you will see the objects be selected one by one. Once you select the object you want to be on top, you can either go to Object/Arrange/… or a simple key shortcut is select the object, hold down shift/command and click the ] key to bring it forward or the [ key to send it to the back.

The plug-in for CS4 is only $29.95 and CS3 is now only $20. It is well worth it in my opinion. You can download either CS3 or CS4 versions at Flux Consulting’s website on this page:

http://fluxconsulting.com/software.html