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.

Make it like Photoshop

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)

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.

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.

Anything would help. Like the Actions in Photoshop or even the Action Wizard in Acrobat.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

I would use actions for styles that are applied frequently

yes please! I would use it to change fonts, styles backgrounds for text and table objects to the same style.

The search engine has paragraph styles, character styles, and object styles. But table and cell style search is not available.

I would use the actions panel with the step and repeat function. I would create multiple actions to create multiple-up layouts for printing. I could make a 21 or 24 up grid for business cards on an 11x17 or 12x18 sheet. This would replace my not so friendly use of indesign templates.

yes PLEASE, action record like photoshop. So surprising Indesign still doesn't have this feature.

desperately need action record / play functions similar to Illustrator / photoshop

I design lots of annual report and all the financial works have to be done on table feature. i had an action to align all numbers to .75 decimal or convert column into 1inch width in single click it would be great.

also please add ability to change strokes and fill in find and change for tables aswell.