Allow multiple character styles to be applied to characters
Allow multiple character styles to be applied to one character.
There should be an »appearance« panel as in Illustrator, which reflects the hierarchy of multiple applied character styles to one character/a text.
This would ease the work with XML and reduce the number of character styles needed. Nowadays you have to trick with GREP styles etc. to apply multiple character styles to one character.
With such a feature, I could define »italic« and »bold« and has no need to define »bold italic«. This will even end up in better HTML export: instead of <span class="BoldItalic">blabl</span> there could be the much better <strong><em>blablabl</em></strong> output.

Thanks for the suggestion. We have started to explore this feature. Will share more details soon
Thanks
Abhinav
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Andrew Mannone commented
So... while it was fun hopping in the way-back machine to visit a post last updated in 2018... It's been almost 5 years. Is that "Soon" in Adobe Dev land? (Asking for a friend from 2023...)
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Sabine commented
Thanks, this is very very important for us.
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Allison Bryant commented
Please! Please provide this! My life would be soooo much easier with this!
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Bevi Chagnon | ACP commented
ADOBE, please removed the many SPAM posts in this thread. They've been flagged.
AND, any update on this feature that was proposed nearly 5 years ago?
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Rainer Klute commented
@anonym:
Yes, the spam is annoying. But the Adobe team members should use their limited time better and implement this long desired feature instead. Pleeease!
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Bevi Chagnon | ACP commented
ADOBE: this thread has been compromised with unrelated spam, begins with this entry:
John White commented · June 29, 2021 7:27 AM · FlaggedPlease remove the junk spam posts.
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Bevi Chagnon | ACP commented
Soon? How soon is "soon" in Adobe's response on December 7, 2018?
I guess time is relative! -
Anonymous commented
I am waiting for this for years now.
We have very big documents in our agency with
- multiple languages
- multiple font styles
- multiple color styles
- multiple GREP Styles
in one document.That leads to about 20 paragraph styles and 20 character styles in one document.
With this feature we would only need 5 paragraph styles and 10 character styles. Sounds weird but thats the case. We struggle with this all along.
Like Even said before: "It should work exactly like CSS — we can have a paragraph with multiple classes applied, and whenever a conflict exists, the most-recently-applied style overrides the others."
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James Wamser commented
Did a really quick mock-up how an Appearance panel might look in InDesign for applying multiple character styles to characters.
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Phantom Steve commented
I see this has been around for almost 2 years.
It would really be a great feature/ability.
Here's hoping it gets some attention. -
Filip Blazek commented
Very useful idea. I often need Superscript+Italic or Bold+Underline or Italic+NoBreak.
I also use Character Styles to define the text for Headers and Footers, but I cannot use Header+Italic. -
Erica Lee commented
Please Please Please incorporate this feature!
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Cathie commented
Totally agree with this proposition! As there may be a character style for "no break" and "italic" and "underline" and even "color," would be so much easier to apply each as fit rather than having to pick which one to apply and which ones to have to format manually.
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Halvor commented
I agree this would be very useful in some circumstances.
However, Character styles are picked up by auto-generated TOCs whether you want it or not. GREP styles aren't. The GREP style can be triggered by an invisible non joiner character inserted in front of the word. With GREP styles you can apply several character styles to the same word, I haven't tested the limits of how many before you run into trouble… GREP styles are applied in the order they are listed under "GREP styles" in a paragraph style. (I found a lot of useful information on this at indesignsecrets) -
George Salnik commented
Hey! Moderators! Are you blind? Kill all this spamer animals here in the comments
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Keith Conover, M.D., FACEP commented
Just ran into a situation where I wanted a heading to have a character style that's picked up by a header and highlight it in yellow and found out it can't be both. Sigh. Agree this would be a great improvement.
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Tobias Wantzen commented
Phantom, as I wrote in my feature request: There should be an »appearance« panel, as you have in Illustrator, which shows the hierarchy of the applied styles. The higher style wins.
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Grant commented
Quite simple, actually. Have conflicts in character styles apply in order of application (e.g., if cs1 applies bold and cs2 applies semibold, bold will apply, given that cs1 is higher priority) and have a warning symbol appear when such conflicts exist, akin to overridden styles., with a contextual option to remove overridden styles.
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Phantom Steve commented
I like this - but how do you prevent the application of conflicting Character Styles ?
For example - how do you prevent the user applying a CS for Condensed Bold and a CS for Extended Bold at the same time ? -
Ulrich Dirr commented
While preparing a book for print it is also useful to have this feature when fine-tuning paragraph make-up. Just think of adding a CF for "no hyphenation" but the word already has "italics" applied.