It's perfectly doable with my tool, unfortunately, Windows only. If anyone is interested - please get in touch.

It's really a shame this is still not done. It makes the feature of variable text -- fundamental to such a huge proportion of documents -- almost completely useless. The request has been extant since long before 2017, but one of the problems with what's now "user voice" is that often multiple requests/needs never get merged, so the demand is not recognized. And here it is, "on the backlog" for almost A DECADE! And now that it's officially in the backlog, a lot of people will just see that notice and not bother to upvote, because it's "being done" any day now. Any year now would be more realistic.

This looks to be an ignored basic function. The use of text variables is ideal for many things, but as I use the Indesign software more and more, I learn how to control aspects, including my future self from missing important revision details. Text variables is how I accomplish some of this. Now I see that a simple document description becomes unreadable when inserted. That's a bit disappointing. This topic is pretty old. I don't have much hope for a fix any time soon.

Honestly, I don't know why this is not a defect. For one type of text to behave so poorly. This is awful behaviour.

We need a solution.

Still in backlog, Adobe? Any acknowledgement of the issue 8 years on would be greatly appreciated by your paying customers.

We really just need to variable text to honour the paragraph style's tracking and hyphenation settings, rather than the current behaviour of variable text forcing negative tracking to illegible extents.

Surely a quick fix? You can call it an AI feature if that helps move this one along.

8 years going strong! C'mon, Adobe.

Long-time InDesign user here, and I'm baffled this isn't a capability in InDesign when similar products like Affinity Publisher 2 offer this functionality (just tried it on my free trial).

Please add this! This would be absolutely wonderful to have seeing as how many people have requested it over the years :]

2024 is almost end Adobe...

Think its a bit nuts that this hasn't been addressed yet.

*knockknock*

We can't mark paragraph styles as captions for accessible PDFs (which we should be able to by the way). But the only way to correctly export captions is deeply flawed. There are laws surrounding accessible documents, so get moving!

Hello! 7 years later and still nothing changed...!

I thought it was critical...!!

It's been 7 years in a critical issue ;/

Can't believe this basic functionality has been in the backlog since 2017, and it's now 2024 with no update from Adobe.

It's was disappointing to keep Variable Text in one text line,,, please I need it

If you could do this today, that would be great.

Another example why Adobe Uservoice and the subscription service is a joke.

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Please ensure that text variables (including live captions) are not only breakable but also capable of being formatted with GREP styles and nested styles. For running headers that rely on paragraph styles, I propose introducing a new option which allows users to retain selected character-level formatting changes from the source paragraph. These changes could include alterations in typeface, style modifications (such as bold, italic, or small caps), and colour changes.

Often the format of the source paragraph differs from the desired format for the running header. To enhance practical usability, it would be beneficial to, for example, allow only the italic formatting from both italic and bold italic source text to be carried over to the variable. Conversely, bold formatting from bold or bold italic source text should be omitted (not retained) if the source text is bold but the running header is intended to be in regular. By enabling users to select which style changes should be transferred to the variable, it would be possible to maintain useful style changes while eliminating undesired ones.

An alternative approach to this challenge could involve allowing users to precisely define a character style mapping, similar way like character styles mapping during text import. This style mapping would then become an integral part of the running header variable definition, allowing it to be applied on the fly.

Adding another request to provide this feature, for all the reasons mentioned in the previous posts.