Pasting multiple objects into frame

Greetings everyone
I was wondering if someone could shed some light on how to best paste multiple objects into a single frame.
Mainly, I'm trying to nest objects that form a part of a newspaper article header; since it's a design element that keeps repeating with each single article I don't want to spend time with manually positioning the elements each time--it's time consuming and prone to sloppiness.
Unfortunately, the base frame will have about three objects that need to be nested within it. Once I paste one object into a frame, the next time I do `Paste into`--the content (previously pasted object in this case) just gets overridden.
I've read that, to paste multiple objects into a single frame, one should group the objects first. Now this works pretty well for getting them into the frame, but leaves me with no options to position them relative to the frame. I can't move or position an object individually and I have no option to ungroup them once they've been pasted.
Here's a small mock-up to depict my peculiar predicament:
Ideally, I'm aiming to have the main header frame to fit the content of the nested objects and for it to be flexible enough that I can quickly span it across multiple columns as per article requirements.

!kRON wrote:
For items that are part of the group, their (X,Y) location coordinates are relative to the document--neither to the group nor the parent frame. The group itself has coordinates that are relative to the parent frame (X+ offset, Y+ offset). I can select the group and the parent frame and use the align to selection options. For individual items, I cannot make a selection of both them and the frame, only between items that are part of a group. I loose options to align an individual item relative to the parent frame, which means I have to drag them around and rely on smart guides.
I've tinkered around some more and it'd appear it's not possible to lay out the elements as I imagined. So I have to resort to grouping the items that would form a frame and pasting them into a frame. If multiple frames have to be members of a single frame I'd have to group the frames and paste them into the single frame and so on.
Based on my layout mock-up, I'd end up with 3 frames within the header frame:
Article header
Heading
Article type
Separator
Article heading
Title
Footer
Author
Shape
Based on experience, should I go with this or stick with the old fashined moving around of loose elements? Will it be a lot of work to maintain resizing and repositioning of the various items and their frames once I start changing the width and height of the header frame or will it save me some time?
I'm not a working designer or production worker, so anything new takes me longer than I think it should, because I don't have a rich reservoir of quick methods at my fingertips.
Your description above interested me, because I've been wrestling with the annoying limitations of manipulating and adding compound objects in anchored frames. For many situations, it's probably simplest to assemble each iteration of a compound object, that introduces a new element, outside the anchored frame, then group the elements and paste the grouped object into the anchored frame.
However, the arrangement of elements in your example made me think that a table might be a workable solution. The answer I arrived at is "Yes, it's a solution, but it takes a while to set up." If it's reusable easily, then it might be worthwhile investing in a few experiments.
I've attached a zipped idml interchange version of the file, and also a PDF.
Here are some notes:
* I created a table with three rows and three columns, no header or footer rows. Three columns because I thought I'd paste a vertical line into an inline anchored frame in the center cell of the top row, for the separator line. Later, I realized that defining the vertical cell rule as paper color would suffice, so I merged the two right cells on the top row to create a two-column row, with text in each cell and the vertical separator between them.
* I merged all three cells on the second row into a single cell.
* I merged the two right cells on the bottom row, but later, when I moved the cell rule to position the triangular graphic in the inline anchored frame in the right cell, it moved the vertical cell rule in the first row. So, I had to unmerge (or split) the cells, and cut/paste the triangular graphic's anchored frame into the rightmost cell. To position the anchored frame, I moved the vertical cell rule with Shift+Drag, to keep the table width unchanged.
* I sampled the purple color with the eyedropper tool while cells were selected and the swatch panel was set to fill the selected object.
* I didn't spend much time matching the type, as you can see. To position the text, I adjusted the cell margins in some cases, and left/right indention in some cases; I'm not sure which is more efficient in situations where there will be different amounts of text to fit. I didn't create cell styles or paragraph styles (BAH! Bad, bad, bad process) because I won't be repeating this stuff, but you probably will benefit greatly from defining styles for your repeating needs.
* The triangular cut into the bottom row made it easy to manage creating and positioning the graphic. A non-geometrical object might be trickier. The triangle is a text frame, set to negative space above, so it overlaps the cell above it, enough to avoid a black gap.
* Except for the vertical paper-colored divider line, all the cells have zero-width strokes.
* I created the table in a text frame, that I fitted down to the size of the table, but I can't remember if I selected, copied, and pasted the text frame into the text flow to anchor it, or if I selected the table in the text frame, copied and pasted it into the flow. Not sure if it makes a difference in work efficiency.
If I understand your general needs, this should work well for changing text and adjusting the column widths.
HTH
Regards,
Peter Gold
KnowHow ProServices

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Edit Multiple Frames.
it's in the help docs but also here:
http://www.biteycastle.com/lessons/emf.htm
--> Adobe Certified Expert (ACE)
--> www.mudbubble.com :: www.keyframer.com
-->
http://flashmx2004.com/forums/index.php?
-->
http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/flash/articles/animation_guide.html
-->
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thewizzard24 wrote:
> I don't know if this is even possible, but what I'd like
to do is shift
> multiple objects, in multiple layers, across multiple
frames. The problem is
> that I built a complex animation as a movie symbol
within the root movie. It
> got so complex, however, that I'd like to just go ahead
and make it the main
> timeline for the root movie. But when I copy and paste
the frames from the
> symbol back out into the root timeline, the location is
wrong. Everything is in
> the correct location relative to each other element, but
wrong relative to the
> stage. Is there any way to grab everything up in all of
those layers and frames
> and just shift it all over to where it's supposed to be?
Or can I somehow shift
> the stage under it?
>
> Thanks in advance.
>

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http://leximation.com/dita-fmx/
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Leximation, Inc.
www.leximation.com

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