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Adobe InDesign: Feature Requests

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153 results found

  1. make book remember relative (to book file) chapter documents path

    book should "remember" documents paths relative to book own file path.
    After copying whole folder with book and documents files to new place, the book is opening chapters from old place instead of the one, that they are.
    Just like it is in Framemaker.

    To omit this error, you have to change the name of old folder.

    22 votes

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  2. Allow for setting or synchronizing book-wide footnote/endnote options

    Right now footnote/endnote options are set on the document level. There should be an option so that the options can either be set on the book level or can be part of the style source sychronization set.

    As it is, if I don't create a template that already has my preferred footnote/endnote settings set, I have to individually make those settings for each chapter in a book.

    19 votes

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  3. The ability to unlink footnote/endnotes from references, thus turning the footnote/endnotes into static notes.

    As a designer who typesets thousands of pages of academic research annually, the ability to convert footnotes to endnotes and vice versa is a helpful addition (thanks InDesign team), but more features are needed:

    The ability to unlink footnote/endnotes from references, thus turning the footnote/endnotes into static notes.

    Currently this process is accomplished only via the benevolence and magic of Peter Kahrel's script, available here: http://www.kahrel.plus.com/indesign/end_to_static_CC2018.jsx

    The reason being, I can no longer use the InDesign XML tagging feature while the footnote/endnotes remain linked—for some reason, XML tagging of footnote/endnote text is not supported!

    If you'll indulge me, here's a…

    19 votes

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  4. Restart endnote numbering within a single document

    I love that endnotes are now a feature, but am finding them to make my job more difficult as they are currently.

    I'd love to see a way to restart endnote numbering within a single document--maybe after a certain paragraph style is used or after a section break. With a multi-hundred page document, it looks more clean (both in the text and in the endnotes section) and is more manageable to have lower numbers.

    19 votes

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  5. Please add a way within a book file to update all document's tables-of-contents.

    Please add a way within a book file to update all document's tables-of-contents.

    Right now, when I make a change to one document that changes page numbering, I must manually go update the TOC of every document in the book individually. This feature could easily be added to the same "Update Numbering" command within a book document.

    17 votes

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  6. Table of contents update only page numbers

    Like in MsWord, it would be a nice feature to update the table of contents and update only the numbers, or update text and numbers together. Sometimes people change long words in a table of content just to fit a header into one line of text. Or they add a few words behind the header just to make the table of content easier to understand. When updating the table of content then it would be nice if you could choose to update only the numbers.

    16 votes

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  7. Split Story

    When working on long documents, it's often unwieldy working with a single long text block, and splitting stories involves cutting and pasting, which takes time and creates possibilities for error. Instead, we should be able to split a text thread with a single click and KEEP the text where it was (instead of having the text as excess in the first text block, with blank text boxes thereafter). A StorySplitter script was created that does this, but I can't seem to get it to work.

    Such a basic feature should be included in InDesign.

    16 votes

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  8. Robust Indexing Software

    We need a more robust indexing software for those of us in book publishing (nonfiction). Due to the finicky nature of having to manually find and enter every index entry, InDesign's indexing software is only plausible for simple indexes that are done infrequently. Because of this, my publishing company adopted a plug-in, Sonar Bookends, a long time ago. Sonar works quite well, but this has made our use of InCopy impossible, as Sonar Bookends was not designed to work with InCopy and is causing it to regularly crash. I don't see any reason why a robust indexing software that can…

    16 votes

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  9. Please bring back mini bridge.

    Mini bridge was a great feature. Using Bridge inside of Indesign saved a lot of time and frustration with messy images files from clients.

    16 votes

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  10. Cross Reference / Hyperlink - EDITING FACILTY

    Overview
    I work on large catalogues all day (over 500 pages) and unfortunately the previous designers didnt have a naming convention for the hundreds of cross references. As a result its a MESS of meaningless names and broken links.

    Research.
    I have looked over the internet to find a solution but there doesn't seem to be one (i found a script that looked promising but it didn't work).

    Request.
    It would be great to have a panel that lists all the links/cross ref. in the document that allows you to RENAME, DELETE or EDIT the existing links.

    16 votes

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  11. Multiple masters for pages

    I design the labels for a company. They have a huge amount of products, and a lot of times the same product has a different label when the weight is different, or when the product is sold to a specific location.

    It would be great to have the option to apply multiple masters per page. That way you can separate some repeating graphics that occur in certain situations. I would like to be able to have certain elements of the design be applied in certain labels, and I would like it to be with a master. So a label will…

    15 votes

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  12. Table of Contents - Allow master page items

    To my knowledge, master page items still don't populate the Table of Contents in Indesign without overriding the master page item.

    Problem with this is it defeats the purpose of the master page item.

    For instance, I have a large manual, in which the chapters are included in a master page layout. The text in the master page item is auto generated using the Special Character - Marker - Section Marker feature, so all I have to do is start a new section in my document.

    But the TOC will not take that text from the master page, unless I…

    13 votes

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  13. Inserting multipage PDF into frames

    I want to be able to insert multipage PDF file into Indesign in easier way, something like: create a frame, set settings, on the first page and then I want Indesign to create exact amount of pages as in PDF file and insert it automatically to box on each page with the same settings as the box on the first page. Thank you.

    13 votes

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  14. make styles palette at book level (as well as variables, master pages and other shared book elements)

    then, there could be a switch button in paragraph styles palette for documents (as well as other palettes) that makes all styles "inherited" from book "superpalette".

    I mean, that I would make ONE set of styles which will be instantly propagated into all book documents, (which have this switch in "on" state).

    I know it can be done with book "synchronize" button, but it is not working, when you change styles name in one document. Synchronizing just add this style as a new to synchronized documents, instead of changing its names everywhere.

    And, last but not least, there will be…

    13 votes

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  15. TOC - Update page numbers only

    Update page numbers only in TOC (like it is possible in a common Text Processing software) would save a lot of time, as we often insert styling and manual line warps in the TOC for aestetical reasons and have to redo it as TOC has to be refreshed and overwrites everything.

    The suggestion in this forum to create Cross-References would also be a nice solution to this problem.

    12 votes

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  16. Allow 'Find in Book' to search for text in all documents of an InDesign book

    I am writing a book, using the InDesign Book feature.
    My book has 18 chapters, each a different InDesign document.
    I would like to be able to search for all occurrences of text, without having to open each document. I would like the results to be a panel something like Adobe Acrobat's Find in Files panel.

    This is useful when I think I've written on a topic in some other chapter, and want to link text in the current chapter to the other chapter.

    12 votes

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  17. 'Even' and 'odd' pages from consecutive files in an InDesign book will not combine on a spread when exporting to PDF

    When exporting a book with multiple InDesign files to PDF the last 'even' page from document 'x' needs to combine with the first 'odd' page of the next document on a spread.
    So let's say document 1 is from page 1-6 and document 2 is from page 7 to page 50, pages 6 and 7 need to merge onto a spread when exporting to PDF. It will now make separate pages, while the pages from one and the same document do come out as spreads.

    12 votes

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  18. Add features to draft legal briefs

    Legal filings are just complicated, cross-linked books.

    Lawyers have to follow court rules when typesetting appellate briefs.
    See e.g., http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/clerk/case_filing/rules/rules_home.html
    https://www.supremecourt.gov/filingandrules/rules_guidance.aspx

    WordPerfect has a few useful features: see "Legal Toolbar" https://www.wordperfect.com/en/product/professional-edition/#features

    You should add a feature to create a Table of Authorities (ToA). The ToA lists each authority cited along with every page on which it is cited. The ToA has different sections for different kinds of authorities, e.g., cases, statutes, etc.

    The best way would be to have InDesign identify authorities/citations. Most lawyers follow the Bluebook. https://www.legalbluebook.com/default.aspx
    Others follow the RedBook or the MaroonBook.

    Make selecting, dragging, and dropping…

    12 votes

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  19. Improved Find/Change with Conditional Text

    The reason is that the Find/Change function has a serious limitation in that it will only find text with certain conditions applied if you choose to search for ALL of the conditions applied to the text in question. That’s fine in the rare cases where I know all the conditions applied to the text that I need to find.

    I want the a radio button behavior, where InDesign will find anything with a certain condition applied to it, even if there are other conditions applied as well.

    For additional details, see:
    https://indesignsecrets.com/limitations-findchange-in-conditional-text.php

    12 votes

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  20. No way to sync footnote options between documents.

    I have a book consisting of several documents. I can sync styles between documents, but not footnote options. Syncing styles does not sync footnote options.

    Having to set footnote options for each document that has them is onerous.

    11 votes

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