A question came in yesterday about why a guide that has been Locked in the Guides palette can still be deleted in QuarkXPress 8.0.x…

And indeed it’s true! When a guide has been locked, you can’t move it, but you can still delete it by Option/Alt-clicking the page rulers.

The good news is that I’ve heard that in version 8.1, this interface oversight will be fixed — you won’t be able to delete a locked guide, except by using the Guides palette. Hoever, there’s no word yet on when 8.1 will arrive.

Meanwhile, here’s a little refresher on how wonderful the Guides palette is. First of all, it’s built into QuarkXPress 8 as a palette. It’s built into QuarkXPress 6 and 7 as “Guides Manager” under the Utilities menu. And if you install Quark’s free Guides Manager XTension into QuarkXPress 4 and 5, you’ll have it as well.

Here’s a screen shot of its interface:

Note that you can create guides numerically, mirror them across spreads, copy and paste them, change their color, toggle their visibility, lock them, and more. And if you click on the flyout menu in the upper right corner, you have even more power over guides.

Notice that you can create a grid of guides, create Bleed and Safety guides, and even export sets of guides for use in other documents.

The Guides palette is tremendously powerful. I highly recommend you spend a few minutes exploring its options. I’m sure you’ll be repaid by time saved on a future project.

Jay Nelson

Jay Nelson is the editorial director of PlanetQuark.com, and the editor and publisher of Design Tools Monthly. He’s also the author of the QuarkXPress 8 and QuarkXPress 7 training titles at Lynda.com, as well as the training videos Quark includes in the box with QuarkXPress 7 . In addition, Jay writes regularly for Macworld and Photoshop User magazines and speaks at industry events.