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
46 comments
-
Anonymous
commented
For instance: the ability to assign a group of steps (selecting contents; duplicating; setting to Multiply; pasting in place; turning on PhotoShop clipping path; assigning a drop shadow and then grouping the two items as ONE action. This is something that is done thousands of times in catalogs on images.
To be able to describe it as an action, select all items on a spread and execute would be phenomenal! -
NEED ACTION PANEL IN ID
commented
Action Panels!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! PLZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
-
Kristofer Haglund
commented
This would be awesome for lots of smaller things, like adding strokes or tilt to certain words when missing a bold or italic typeset. Adding the same effects to images instead of trying to aim the cursor to the correct object or writing down the numbers would also be nice. Also would be great when creating identical tables over and over.
-
Emily
commented
PLEASE make this an option, I actually cannot believe it isn't yet. I use data merge to mass produce envelopes, but my particular printer needs all text outlined before sending, so I have to take the time to page by page flatten the text. It takes forever and seems like it could so easily be done. Please let us mass select across pages!!!
-
Kirk Thornton
commented
I use data merge to create hundreds of personalized digital ads. I would love to have an action that runs the data merge as well as exports the files.
-
Sergio Matos
commented
Make it like Photoshop
-
Pierpaolo
commented
It would be fantastic if the action panel would be connected to the history (e.g.: drag a history step into an action to add that step to a recorder action, or, even better, turn some selected steps from the history into a new action)
-
Aubrey
commented
I need this ability. The print shop I work for receives documents with hundreds of pages that need to be resized. For example, Letter (8.5 x 11) to half-page (5.5 x 8.5). I haven't found an easy way to do this and spend hours resizing these documents for print. If I could record changing the first page, then apply that to every page, I could save hours of work.
-
Luis Juarbe
commented
One example. I do a lot of Certificates (for students) Most of their names are in Spanish. When I import the file that the institution provides all the accented characters change. For example á turns to "√°". I can change all thos one by one with find/replace all, but I have to do it for each character á, é, ú, í, ñ etc. I have to do it for EVERY course taken by the students. If I have an action that I can record all I have to do is play the action and wait.
-
Gregor
commented
Anything would help. Like the Actions in Photoshop or even the Action Wizard in Acrobat.
-
David Cain
commented
Realizing now that this is an old post, but this feature is still desperately needed within InDesign. Scripting is great an all, but an actions panel that works just like the Actions panel in Photoshop would change the game for designers like myself that are involved in mass scale production. I work for Lifetouch, and we have to convert an incredible amount of print materials into editable PDFs with layer versioning at various sizes, and also have to move contents of some pages to other pages etc. It is horribly tedious, and if I could just record the action once and click a button to run it again and again, it would save the design team here ridiculous amounts of time.
-
Soheil Moradi
commented
Please, I really need Actions in InDesign too. I use a lot to configure labels and a lot of other things in books and printed material. It would be a great time saver. Love it in Photoshop, will love it too in INDD
-
Anonymous
commented
Yes, capturing keystrokes exactly like in Photoshop would be very useful. For instance, in book design - to click a shortcut that enters a glyph for a chapter start, adds a paragraph style to the title etc. I would use actions like that many times in the course of a day for book design. And it would have to be easy and quick to create, just like in Photoshop, so that I can capture keystrokes on the fly just for a particular function on a particular project. There is so much that I do that is repetitive in book design that could be made much easier by a keystroke capture function.
-
Marina
commented
Please, I really need Actions in InDesign too. I use a lot to configure labels and a lot of other things in books and printed material. It would be a great time saver. Love it in Photoshop, will love it too in INDD
-
Anonymous
commented
I have a list of repetitive actions, creating a caption setup for multiple files in a book. The Actions Panel would be of great help since we are not allowed to write scripts. It would save so much time just to hit a keystroke that would change all the options in the "caption setup" dialog box. I don't understand why Indesign does not have this option.
-
Scott Falkner
commented
Actions could significantly fill in gaps in other incomplete features. For example, Table and Cell Styles are terrible for complex tables. Row high and column width are completely absent, as is any way to specify the styles of cells in the middle of a table. Actions could record setting a row height or column width, selecting all the cells in a row, and applying a Cell Style. put all that into one action and formatting complex tables consistently (although without full style support) would be much easier.
Photoshop and Illustrator have been greatly improved by adding actions, although Illustrator, as is its custom, handles actions worse. InDesign would likewise be made much better with actions, especially if they supported variables and conditions.
-
Mary
commented
I would love to be able to record actions in InDesign and then use them for repetitive tasks. For instance, enlarging an image, fitting the frame and then repositioning the image. In catalog production I do this over and over. What a time saver an action would be. Scripts are mentioned in some of the posts, but I don't know how to write scripts.
-
Anonymous
commented
I would use actions for styles that are applied frequently
-
Anonymous
commented
yes please! I would use it to change fonts, styles backgrounds for text and table objects to the same style.
-
ökkeş şat
commented
The search engine has paragraph styles, character styles, and object styles. But table and cell style search is not available.