As proposal professionals, we know that anything that saves time is worth its weight in gold. And as a proposal designer, I live in Adobe InDesign. It’s my favorite of Adobe’s software suite, and it’s packed with tools and tricks that can make the proposal designing process go much faster. Here are three that I find myself using on just about every proposal.

Grid of Frames

When making the layout for a page with a grid of shapes or frames, do you find yourself making one and the copy-dragging the rest, checking your alignment as you go? Great news: there are keyboard shortcuts for that!

With the shape or frame tool selected, use the arrow keys to increase your total columns and rows. Hitting the up arrow twice will give you three total columns; hitting the left arrow twice will give you three total rows. All of the frames will be the same size, and holding the shift key will make them all equal, perfect squares.

To change the gutter size between each of the frames, holding the command key while using the arrow keys will increase or decrease the gaps.

Tip: This also works with text frames!

Phone Number Formatting

Adding in numbers for references and contacts can be a pain when the source materials all use different formatting. Save yourself the time and the frustration with batch formatting!

After you’ve added in all the numbers to your document (they don’t all have to be on the same page), open the Find/Change window. In the Query drop-down menu at the top, select “Phone Number Conversion.” Use the Find/Change button to view each matching number individually, or use Change All to format them all at once. Ta-da!

Fit Frame to Size Shortcut

You’re probably familiar with the Frame Fitting options panel for images, but did you know there’s a shortcut for that? Double-clicking on different nodes of a selected frame will automatically resize the frame! Double-click the bottom center node to jump the top and bottom of the frame to the bottom of your content; double-click the bottom/top left corners to resize the lefthand size of your frame, and vice-versa on the right side.

Tip: This works with text frames too! I always want my text frames to align exactly with my text, and that double-click on the bottom center node snaps it up to underneath the last line and makes the process a breeze.