If you’re a digital neat freak like I am (You’ll know, because you always name your Photoshop layers. Always!), then you’ve likely performed this task manually countless times. You draw out an object container in Adobe InDesign—such as a text box or image box—place the content in it and resize the content. Next you have to manually resize the object container so it’s only large enough to hold the content within it. Otherwise you end up with a ton of overlapping object frames, making it difficult to select just the right one.

Fortunately, you can make it easy on yourself with this quick shortcut…

When you have an object container that is much larger than the content it holds (such as the top text box in the image above), simply select it with either the Selection or Direct Selection tool (solid or empty arrow tool) and double-click any of the CORNER HANDLES of the object frame. The frame will automatically resize to be just large enough to fit the contents (lower text box in the image above).

Bonus:
I’ve emphasized corner handles above, because if you double-click the top-middle or bottom-middle handles, you’ll resize the object container’s height only. And as you may have now guessed, if you double-click the frame’s side handles, you’ll resize the object container’s width only.

I published this tip back in 2012, but it wasn’t obvious in the original article that it works on text frames as well as image frames—plus, it’s such a simple and useful tip that I thought it was worth repeating.