Using "Invisible" Objects When Working in Author-it

In the same way that you can exclude an object from appearing in a specific output, you can exclude an object from all outputs. That way it appears in Author-it, but does not appear in any shape or form in your published outputs. Let's look at some examples of when and how this is useful...

Excluded Styles:

By creating a style that does not appear in any of the outputs (by removing the include object in setting under General tab), you can apply that style to text to "hide" it in your published outputs. This can be useful for adding comments when reviewing or for marking changes that may be required later. Make it green, red, blue, bold, italic... any format you wish. The style only appears that way in Author-it.

Note: If applying an excluded character style to an entire paragraph, the text itself won't appear in the published output, but the empty paragraph will. In these cases, you would need to use an excluded paragraph style.

Excluded Topics:

You can even exclude whole Topics from being published.
"Now why would you want to do that?" I hear some of you asking... This can be really useful when your Book isn't complete, but needs to be published now. By assigning an "Excluded Topic Template" to those Topics that aren't finished, you can have the structure of your Book complete in Author-it - allowing you to fill in the details later. Only those topics that are ready to be published are included in the final output.

Remember: You can quickly find which topics use your invisible comments style, or which topics are excluded from being published, by right-clicking the style or template and choosing Show Relationships.