Adobe InDesign: Feature Requests
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2. Why is this valuable to you?
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5487 results found
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Create a new document based on selected pages of an existing indesign document.
I would like to be able to select pages within an existing InDesign document and create a new document using those pages, much like you can with layers in photoshop.
In photoshop when you select 'duplicate layer(s)' you have the option of duplicating them into different documents, including a new one. When I am designing a business card for a client, for example, I present multiple options. I will make all of the options in one document as separate pages. When they choose one I would like to be able to select the specific pages and duplicate them straight to a new document, without having to go through the typical process of creating a new one. This would save a lot of time and hassle in the iteration process
I would like to be able to select pages within an existing InDesign document and create a new document using those pages, much like you can with layers in photoshop.
In photoshop when you select 'duplicate layer(s)' you have the option of duplicating them into different documents, including a new one. When I am designing a business card for a client, for example, I present multiple options. I will make all of the options in one document as separate pages. When they choose one I would like to be able to select the specific pages and duplicate them straight to…
17 votes -
Paragraph Borders: Inset vs Offset or "Keep Within Frame"
LOVE that borders and shading are now built into paragraph styles; but, I would like to be able to create a paragraph border with an inset (instead of an offset), or something like the "keep in frame" option for paragraph rules. The result is a paragraph outline in line with the other paragraphs above and below it, but with an inset paragraph inside the border.
17 votes -
End-notes and Footnotes URLS
I do a lot of books for Print and digital (pdf and ePub). End-notes have always been a problem, even now that Indesign supports End-notes.
For PDF and ePub export , in order to have the end-note reference clickable to redirect the user to it's corresponding end-note, then a link back again, I have to do this manually.
This is a massive manual process...
Let's say I have 100 end-notes. With each end-note reference, I have to place a new 'Hyperlink Destination' (for the return link)... That's going through the document, and placing 100 hyperlink destinations.
Then, I go to each end-note and I place both a 'hyperlink destination', then a 'new hyperlink' back to the end-notes reference (text anchor created when I added the hyperlink destination). So I'm now up to 300 manual urls/destinations I've had to create.
Now to finish, I now go back to each end-note reference and create a new hyperlink to it's corresponding end-note (text anchor).
So now I've had to add 400 links/destinations manually. It would be soooo nice that, just like the Table of Contents which auto creates urls to it's corresponding list items, that footnotes and end-notes would automatically create reciprocal URLS.
I do a lot of books for Print and digital (pdf and ePub). End-notes have always been a problem, even now that Indesign supports End-notes.
For PDF and ePub export , in order to have the end-note reference clickable to redirect the user to it's corresponding end-note, then a link back again, I have to do this manually.
This is a massive manual process...
Let's say I have 100 end-notes. With each end-note reference, I have to place a new 'Hyperlink Destination' (for the return link)... That's going through the document, and placing 100 hyperlink destinations.
Then, I go to…
17 votes -
Add Graph
A graph creating option, similar to one on Illustrator.
17 votes -
YAML and JSON
I don't know if this should go into the scripting category.
But could you please extent InDesign's capability or range when it comes to import or process data files, using structured data and Data Merge etc.
From only accepting CSV files to also accept, JSON and YAML
17 votes -
Setting to automatically update links on Open
Allow an option/setting to disable the dialog when opening a document with updated links and if a link has been updated it updates or doesn't update it automatically based upon the User Setting.
17 votes -
A check box to Remove Local Formatting in an auto TOC.
You include a checkbox to Remove Forced Line Breaks in the text styles used for the auto TOC so why not one to Remove Local Formatting so the text style can display exactly the way you set it in the TOC styles dialogue. Now one must select all the text and set Character Style to None every time the TOC is updated which is inefficient. Thanks.
17 votes -
Add More Styles to CC Libraries
We'd like to be able to add more styles to the CC Library, i.e. object styles and cell styles. This would be helpful when collaborating on a project.
17 votes -
Please rename the Assignment panel to the InCopy Workflow panel
We don't use Assignments and we don't know anyone who does, we all work on the layout; but use the Assignments panel to track the status of our stories, in the "Unassigned InCopy" category. The panel should be renamed to InCopy Workflow, though the ability to create assignments can stay for the minority of people who use that feature.
17 votes -
Hiding system fonts or warning about using them
Add system fonts in the unauthorized fonts of the preflight panel.
I work in the IT department of a press group; our users work on Mac, but we use a Windows InDesign Server solution to process PDF’s. Our users are warned that they should use only OTF fonts but some of them ignore these warnings.The other solution would be to be able to hide system fonts in the font dropdown menu.
17 votes -
Ability to create a master text file that updates everywhere the content is used, much like DocsFlow or WordsFlow, but better.
I am constantly making catalogs and the proofing process is arduous because we always have to read through text to check for spelling errors, grammar mistakes, etc. If there was a way to create one Master text file (whether it’s an InDesign, Word, Excel doc, etc) and link it to any document, have one or more people edit it, have it update across the board and not override any local changes would be fantastic. Now, I know there are extensions you can use, such as DocsFlow and WordFlow, but the problem with these is that you cannot choose specific text from the Google doc you want to sync over to InDesign. For example:
I make a page in InDesign about jewelry. On the page, there are multiple separate text boxes about the different types of jewelry. If I have a file in Google docs that has descriptions about our various types of jewelry and sync it over, I’m not able to choose the exact description (paragraph) that I need to go in an InDesign text box. I can't have that. What I need is one Master text file with details about the content for every product we have, that can be synced over to InDesign. But I need to be able to CHOOSE exactly what text I want to sync over to one text box. If I have a bunch of different paragraphs on one Google doc and sync it over, it puts everything in that Google doc into one text box. I'm sure you can see the problem here.
Now, I have found a way around this by using cross referencing, but I can only do one paragraph at a time, and if one paragraph happens to be a line, such as a subheading, I will have to go back in again and choose the next paragraph of text. This is time consuming and I want to make this as efficient as possible.
I think this features should be able to take one Master (again, could be an InDesign, Word, or Excel doc), link it to an INDD file, update it both ways while a designer and editor are working on it at the same time, keep local edits, notify people about conflicting changes, choose EXACTLY what I need from the Master, and use whatever styles and fonts I wish in the local document that won’t be lost when the files are synced/updated.
I hope that made sense. But I think a feature like this would be beneficial for everyone!I am constantly making catalogs and the proofing process is arduous because we always have to read through text to check for spelling errors, grammar mistakes, etc. If there was a way to create one Master text file (whether it’s an InDesign, Word, Excel doc, etc) and link it to any document, have one or more people edit it, have it update across the board and not override any local changes would be fantastic. Now, I know there are extensions you can use, such as DocsFlow and WordFlow, but the problem with these is that you cannot choose specific text…
17 votes -
Create the condition from a list of paragraphs/character styles
Ability to create the new condition form a list of paragraph style or character styles
I would improve the ability to search on more than 1 paragraph/character style at once.Sometimes you have to search more than one style – rather than go through each style at once, the ability to create a condition to select a range of styles would be useful.
17 votes -
Can Idml file open with his own name
When I open .idml file in InDesign, it opens as Untitled-# document. Is it possible that when I open .idml it opens as the filename instead of "Untitled-#"? Because I have received some many idml files, I am spending time save as file into INDD.
17 votesHi All, this feature is now added in the latest version of InDesign i.e. InDesign 13.1.
You can upgrade your InDesign to get access to this feature.
Regards
Javed -
Threaded Text in Tables
This feature will allow text threading via table cells to flow the text across the table.
This will personally help me because I need to colorize specific areas while keeping the text flow. A table is the only real place I can do this.
17 votes -
Make Optical Margin Alignment part of Paragraph Style
It's not logical to do this by hand for every Story...
16 votes -
Color-code paragraph styles
I'm working on a huge training book with dozens of styles. I've stashed them in style groups, but it is still a chore, even inside a group, to scroll, scroll, scroll to try to find the style I need -- and it is also a chore to switch among the style groups themselves -- as many of the styles are used on every page due to the nature of the material. It would be SO VERY HELPFUL if one could color-code paragraph styles (a la the Layers palette) so that when there are this many styles, the ones a person needs can be spotted and accessed more quickly. I am in and out of the paragraph palette every 5-10 seconds, scrolling, scrolling, and it's driving me nuts.
I'm working on a huge training book with dozens of styles. I've stashed them in style groups, but it is still a chore, even inside a group, to scroll, scroll, scroll to try to find the style I need -- and it is also a chore to switch among the style groups themselves -- as many of the styles are used on every page due to the nature of the material. It would be SO VERY HELPFUL if one could color-code paragraph styles (a la the Layers palette) so that when there are this many styles, the ones a person…
16 votes -
Improve Preflight
Isn’t it about time for an update and some enhancements to this great feature? Some suggestions:
- Change the default Preflight Profile to something realistic for quality printing. The absence of warnings is misleading, making people think that everything is fine.
- Divide the check for “Protected fonts” into two categories: 1. Fonts which do not allow embedding in PDF, 2. Activated Adobe fonts (the existing behaviour of flagging Adobe fonts as “not allowed” causes a lot of confusion)
- Change the wording “Transparency not allowed” to just “Transparency” Transparency is rarely a problem nowadays, though it is still good to check whether everything looks as expected.
- Give users the option to choose which kinds of transparency they want to check for, and which not – or at least between opacity, effects and overprint applied in the Attributes Panel.
- Give users the option to choose which kinds of bleed problems they want flagged, so they can decide if they want to include text frames (which are rarely a problem), lines, images and image frames. This would reduce the clutter that makes it all too easy to overlook something
- Add an option to include Ink Limit. Looking though hundreds of pages in Separations Preview is very time consuming, and errors are easily overlooked.
- Make it possible to choose between the existing behaviour of zooming in on errors, and keeping the selected view. The same goes for when you are finding and replacing text an need to decide depending on the context. E.g., choosing to show a bleed error will invariable result in zooming so close that one cannot see what is happening and what can be done about it. The opposite is the case when checking large pages with lots of small images.
- Allow users to set a limit to how much non-proportional scaling is acceptable, such as “show only deviations larger than 3%”.
- Make it possible to tab through the error messages, to quickly see the Info. Or even better, add a column so one can see the values just beside the errors, instead of only in the Info window. My dream: Change the whole view to make it similar to the Links Panel, so you are free to sort errors by all kinds of criteria.
- When checking for colour errors, give users the options to distinguish between seeing colour warnings from images, and from the document (RGB in images may be OK, but not in the document)
- Make it possible to see the names of conditional text indicators which causes errors.
- Make it possible to check for missing links in Illustrator files.
- Make it possible to flag an error as being OK, and to save this info with the document.
- This is probably asking the impossible: It would be really cool if by some artificial intelligence you could detect “looks like 100% Black but is not” in vector graphics. With live text and graphics in InDesign itself, at least you can add unnamed colors to get an idea of the suspects, and perhaps temporarily change them to spots in order to “trick” Preflight to find them. Detecting Registration color in graphics works fine, but there are so many other varieties of black made from all the four CMYK colors, such as C=83 M=67 Y=51 K=95, which can look very ugly in print when used on thin lines or small text, and also cause problems on large areas because of too high ink coverage. Again, the only way I know is going through the whole document with Black turned off in Separations Preview, and try to spot thin lines etc. which would be safer to print in pure Black, a rather time consuming process.
- Bleed Hazard warnings should not depend on the document bleed settings, but only on the choices you make in Preflight options. Suppose my document setup has a bleed of 5 mm, and Preflight is set to minimum 3 mm, I will still get warnings about missing bleed for images which extend more than 3 mm outside the page margin.
- Paragraph marks, spaces, tabs etc. should not be marked as overset text. Please change this so that only real missing text is listed.
- Registration color is flagged even when it will not appear on print, like in backlists with cropped PDF’s of covers, or when illustrations are reused by placing print-ready pages from other books. Please change this so that only real problems are listed.
Isn’t it about time for an update and some enhancements to this great feature? Some suggestions:
- Change the default Preflight Profile to something realistic for quality printing. The absence of warnings is misleading, making people think that everything is fine.
- Divide the check for “Protected fonts” into two categories: 1. Fonts which do not allow embedding in PDF, 2. Activated Adobe fonts (the existing behaviour of flagging Adobe fonts as “not allowed” causes a lot of confusion)
- Change the wording “Transparency not allowed” to just “Transparency” Transparency is rarely a problem nowadays, though it is still good to check whether…
16 votes -
Auto-snap row height to baseline grid
Tables need an automated interaction of table row height with baseline grid (i.e. where row heights snap to baseline grid depending on cell contents, for instance). If this was a thing, it would solve all vertical space problems related to tables, because it would be enough to create a paragraph style with a leading matching that of the baseline grid to use and style the cells text with. Then you'd have real, modular, accurate yet automated control of tables' vertical deployment in the page space (not addressing overset cells, though).
16 votes -
Multiple strokes like Illustrator has
InDesign should have the ability to have more than one stroke on an object the way that Illustrator does. I've wanted this multiple times and now it's come up again with a design that uses a filled frame behind a headline and also a stroke inside the bounding box of the filled frame. To make this design efficient in production, the ideal is for this to be one object with the type in the center, the stroke a controlled distance away and another stroke that is the same color as the fill outside the first stroke. See attached screen shot. Combine this object with the Auto Size feature for a text frame, and you have an object that can be quickly repurposed with different text while automatically maintaining the proper distances between type and first stroke and between the stroke and the outside of the frame. Currently it has to be two objects and if the type needs more that one line, the height of the background frame has to be adjusted manually.
In Illustrator you use the Appearance panel to keep adding strokes and change characteristics. In this design it's super easy to align the first stroke to the inside and the second stroke to the outside.
Another solution is to add a characteristic to stroke alignment: align to inside with an offset or in this case you'd call it an inset.
InDesign should have the ability to have more than one stroke on an object the way that Illustrator does. I've wanted this multiple times and now it's come up again with a design that uses a filled frame behind a headline and also a stroke inside the bounding box of the filled frame. To make this design efficient in production, the ideal is for this to be one object with the type in the center, the stroke a controlled distance away and another stroke that is the same color as the fill outside the first stroke. See attached screen shot.…
16 votes -
Feature to export / import workspace settings
As a freelancer working in and out of different studios, having to set up workspaces each time could be made easier by being able to import a workspace setting (like you can with swatches).
This feature would be useful across all CS programs.
16 votes
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