If you ever need to make any major structural changes to one of your books then here’s a tip - before you do anything print out the structure of your book as it is, just in case you need to revert back to your original structure!  To print the structure of a book:

1. Open the book in the Book Editor view.
2. Click on the Author-it Button, located in the top left corner of the main window.
3. Select Print > Print Book.

…and now if you get into a real mess with the structure you can always flatten the structure so that everything is at the top level, get the topics in the right order and re-do the structure.”

Amanda Caley, Director, Content Chameleon,
Author-it Certified Consultant.

One of the recent enhancements to Author-it is the ability to use Quick Tables - a nifty little feature that enables you to quickly insert a table by choosing from a selection of already preformatted tables.
A quick table is simply a regular Author-it topic containing a preformatted table, with or without standard text. If you frequently use tables with specific formatting you can create a separate topic for each quick table, and then save that topic to your Quick Tables folder so that you don’t need to recreate the table each time that you want to use it.

Step One: Create the Quick Tables:

1. Create a folder to store your Quick Tables.
2. Create a new topic in the folder (using any standard topic template).
3. Insert a new table with the required number of columns, rows and formatting. You can set things such as the borders that are applied, the cell background color, text used inside the table (such as row headings), and the styles that are applied to the text.
4. Save the topic.

After creating the quick tables you need to tell Author-it which folder they are stored in.
Step 2: Assign the Quick Tables Folder:

1. Open a topic and under the Edit tab, select Table > Quick Tables then choose Change Folder for Quick Tables…
2. Select the folder you created a moment ago, and choose OK.

Once the folder has been assigned you are ready to insert the tables into your topics.
Step 3: Insert a Table Using Quick Tables:

1. Open a  topic and click where you want to insert a table.
2. Under the Edit tab, select Table > Quick Tables. A preview of each table is displayed.
3. Click on a table from the preview to insert it in your topic.

Voila! The table is added and already formatted as you want, ready for you to add additional data as needed.

Posted by Gretchen Rogers, Author-it Software Corporation

If you manage a large number of images in your Author-it Library, you’ll want to hear about a nice little feature we’ve added in Author-it 5.1. Using this new feature couldn’t be easier and the result could save you a huge amount of time.

Creating a file object to store an image in Author-it is a quick and easy process. You’ve probably been in the same situation as me though: you have fifteen images in a folder on your desktop which all must be added to your Author-it library as file objects. Creating the objects individually could be time-consuming and error-prone, there must be a better way.

In Author-it 5.1 there is a better way:

1. Open Author-it 5.1 and log in to your library.
2. Open the folder you wish to import your images into.
3. Select all the images you want to import from your desktop or Windows Explorer (it could be one or it could be one hundred.
4. Drag the selected images and drop them in the Author-it folder listing.
5. Click the “OK” button in the “Create File Objects” window.
6. File objects are created for each image.

There are a few additional points of interest on the “Create File Objects” window that you may find useful:

• The text “<FileTitle>” will be replaced with the images file name in the description field.
• You can choose the folder objects are created in, and the template they’re based on.

Sometimes it’s the small things added in a release can make all the difference.
I hope you find Drag and Drop Images as useful as I do. Check out the release notes for Author-it 5.1 for more features you may have missed.
Posted by John Mikkelsen, Director of Development Author-it Software Corporation