Actions Panel
An Actions Panel that runs the same type of Recording/Playing features as Photoshop and Illustrator already have would be fantastic.
Tom Miatke
shared this idea
Hello All,
Kindly provide more information about this ask. How do you plan to use the Action Panel in InDesign? Do you want it to work exactly like that in Photoshop? What are the most important actions/operations that you want to record?
Thanks
Abhinav Agarwal
Product Manger – InDesign
89 comments
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Adrian Yudeson commented
My use case at the moment: A (buggy) script has nudged ever text frame away from the spine by a fixed number of units. I'd like to create an action to nudge them back. It's quicker for me to nudge 180 frames than to write a script, since I have no experience writing IDD scripts, but if were able to record a nudge and then play it back 180 times, it would save me a lot of time right now.
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Suzette Edwards commented
Okay, I'm going to add my input on this. I am constantly creating a caption from an image. After doing so, I have to change the font, change the background, put a stroke on it, change the inset spacing and change the corner. This would REALLY be nice to have in an action.
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Christina
commented
I would like to create an action so that I can use a keyboard shortcut that automates the following (updates/relinks all links that have been broken due to files/folders being moved):
Open preflight panel and select top picture in missing link list
Click on relink
In the locate window: search for *.* (which gives a list of all files in the current folder and subfolders (here I want to, if need be, before running the action, select folder)
Click enter (as long as there are not multiple files with the same name as the broken file this will automatically relink the picture to where the file i now saved).
click ok in the information window.
relinks a broken link to any file (in a given/may last used folder with subfolder) with the same name. As it is now I -
Matt Statter commented
That would be great to have actions. I'm currently typesetting lots of text in tables and I need to change the case of just certain parts of the text to 'Title Case' but it feels very laborious, if there was an action set up I'm sure that would make things quicker.
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CAROLINA PORTO RUWER
commented
Making it work as Photoshop or Illustrator, pls.
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Joost Egelie
commented
It baffles me that this does not exist yet.
I use the Actions panel to create custom registration marks around any selection in Illustrator, please incorporate this in InDesign.
Following is an excerpt of my (recorded!) action:1. group current selection and name the grouped object via Object Description (i.e. "tempObject")
2. paste predefined registration mark and name it ("regOne")
3. select all
4. align to top and to left
5. select objects with the name "regOne"
6. transform 15 mm to the left
7. duplicate the object and name the result "regTwo"etcetera etcetera...
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Anonymous
commented
Just making it work as photoshop or illustrator would be great.
For me any action which let me "record" few steps and then apply them automatically would be AMAZING!Also if you could add the "batch" script for actions as Photoshop does it, then this would be the BEST OF THE BEST!
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Sami Gale commented
How is this not already a thing? This is part of my day to day in photoshop and illustrator. For me, hiding and showing layers. Basically anything that I can do in the app should be actionable - like photoshop.
I create a bunch of template files and update colours and a few graphics every month. I wish I could have the option for an input box which can then change the value of an item (for example changing "SWATCH COLOUR 1", Change the month to "February". I already have one data merge in my indesign file, so a second data merge would be helpful too.
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Andre
commented
Image manipulations such as:
Moving along X and Y axis
Width and Height
Effects (shadow, etc) -
Anonymous
commented
we need an action panel that would record identifiying patern in text for example:
if i past a block of text into a text frame:
1. take the first line as title and format it in a separate frame
2. take the rest of the text and spread it on a three or two column text frames.
3. take the second paragraph and format it as a secondary title.
4. be able to use paragraph styles as we;; int he formatting4. format the rest of the text in a specific font.
that would be a great time saver for newspaper page production.
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Anonymous
commented
I would love to be able to record the following operations, which I do every day with a lot of documents, in order to clean them up prior to printing:
• Select all unused character styles, replace with none and keep formatting, then sort the rest by name
• Delete all unused paragraph styles, table styles, cell styles and object styles, and sort the rest by name
• Delete all unused color swatches, and add unnamed colors
• Delete all notes
• Delete all imported PDF comments
• Set conditional text indicators to hide
• Delete all bookmarks
• Delete all hyperlinks to web pages
• Delete unused layers
• Delete all images on pasteboard
• Turn off smart text reflow -
Alessio Azzolini
commented
Usually, I work with different clients, so it's difficult for a list of operations to record. For every project that could be something new to recording, for example, export in a fast way or find and replace something, in particular, displace/move/copy. I saw a lot of people ask this function (record something) in different years, so I think that it's a very important feature for us and for our work. I know that there is the script function but recording 4-5-7 operations with 1 click it's the fastest way.
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Anonymous
commented
If you want actions to do find and replace, there are several scripts which will do the job just as well by chaining saved queries. I can warmly recommend the one described here: https://www.creativepro.com/automate-grep-find-change-indesign-chaingrep/
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Pam Stevenson
commented
I typeset study guides in Indesign and I place the text from Word and then have to do the same with every single file,
find superscript > replace Superscript character style
find bold > replace Bold character style
find italic > replace Italic character style
find font size 14 > replace Subheader character style
find font size 13 > replace MinorSubheader character style
find font size 12 > replace Body character styleHaving the Actions palette would allow me to automatize these actions and to have a consistent work flow for each file.
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Jandos
commented
I would love this feature, and would use it mostly for serial find/change operations. Texts come from clients with various idiosyncrasies and house styles, I use Find Change by List often, but it is more or less useful depending on whose house style you are converting to typographical style. To have access to a saved series of F/C operations for each client would be great.
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Mait
commented
It is so wierd that Indesign does not have actions panel. Character and Paragraph styles have shortcut capablity. Think of it if there were none.
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Tom Miatke
commented
Hi Abhinav,
I realise this has been a long time in response, but would love to hear if this idea is any closer to being a reality?The way I see it working is very similar to how Photoshop's Actions panel works. Recording functions, methods and the workings of what we do on screen. I think there would need to be a way to specify actions and/or workflows happening per page or in the entire document, but I can definitely see its benefit. I think it would really bring a whole new level of automation to the program.
I think by reading the comments everyone can see various uses and how it could be implemented so I think it would be a valuable asset to the program. By the looks of it, people want to be able to record their various repetitive workings... so its hard to define exactly WHAT, but to be able to record repetitive functions is key. On a daily I use InDesign... but I think I could efficiency by about 50-60% with an actions panel.
I could definitely see it increasing Character/Paragraph styling, Find and Change queries, Scripting functions, Exporting file types, Placing in Data, File Naming, Tables and so much more.
Hopefully this can be implemented soon, I can see how well it could work and I'm excited!
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Vinoth Kumar
commented
Hi Team, If we add the Actions Panel in the newer version of the InDesign as in Photoshop, it would be great to use it and it will reduce the AHT and increase the Quality.
Thank you!
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Anonymous
commented
Dear Abhinav,
when we import MSWord document into our beloved indesign, somethings are going to be handled manually. including find/replace superscript (local) to Superscript style you made earlier. This as you know is to prevent the override of the superscripts when you override a paragraph style which you would inevitably do.
This I do with saving find/replace query.
The list of manual things goes on. for example when you want to override local formatting of all paragraph styles in your text you have to make a unique query for each of the styles. This gets extremely frustrating when you have to do it over and over again. A simple action recorder would solve this issue easily.Regards
Kian
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Jackson
commented
Actions would be useful for me when it comes to prepping files to send to print vendors. The vendors I use still expect outlined versions of all fonts, so I want to create an action that does the following:
1.) Override all Master Page Items
2.) Select All
3.) Ungroup
4.) Outline TextIdeally there would be a way to do this for every page in a document at the same time, but barring that having an action that I could run with a single key command would save a lot of time over the multi-step way I currently have to do it.