From the course: InDesign Secrets
170 Batch convert InDesign files to IDML and other formats - InDesign Tutorial
From the course: InDesign Secrets
170 Batch convert InDesign files to IDML and other formats
- You have a bunch of InDesign documents and you need to convert or export them all to some other format. For example, maybe you want to export them all as PDF, or maybe they're all InDesign CC files and you need to convert them to IDMLs, so that CS4, CS5 or CS6 users can open them. Well, if you work by the hour you can just skip this tip because it's gonna save you way too much time! But for the rest of us, those who hate sitting in front of the computer doing the same thing over and over again, you have to get a free script called Batch Convert, written by Peter Kahrel. You can find it here at indesignsecrets.com/free. Just look in the Free Scripts section. You can click on that link to go to Peter Kahrel's website, and then download it from there. There's also a link here on this page that explains how to install scripts, in case you don't know how, or look here in the lynda.com Online Training Library for our InDesign Secrets movie that will show you. Now once that script is installed, you'll find it inside your Scripts panel, which you can find by going to the Window menu, choosing Utilities, and then choosing Scripts. When you installed this script, you put it either in the Application folder or the User folder. I put mine in the User folder so I can find it here by clicking on this triangle and looking inside. There it is, batch_convert I'll open up that folder, and I can see the script here, batch_convert.jsxbin Now we'll go ahead and run that script by double-clicking on it. First I need to tell it what folder to process. I'll click on this Folder button, and I'll select my Lots of Documents folder. By default, that's gonna put the result, whatever it converts or exports, into that same folder. But you could change that if you want to. I'm not gonna go into a lot of detail about all the options in this dialog box. There's documentation on Peter's site. But the main thing is you wanna point out what kind of documents it should be looking for, in this case InDesign documents, and what kind of documents you want them to convert into or export as. In this case we're going to choose IDML, but you can see there's lots of different formats you could choose from. Also, it's a really good idea to turn on the "Ignore errors" checkbox, otherwise if there are missing links or modified links, it's gonna constantly remind you of that, so turn that on. Okay, let's do the conversion. I'll click OK and InDesign jumps into action here, exporting those documents one at a time. When it's done, if there were any errors, it would tell me with a little alert. But in this case that dialog box just disappears, so I know I'm done. Let's switch back to the Desktop here, and you can see there's an IDML document for each one of those InDesign files. I don't know if this is 10 times faster than I could do it manually, or 50 times faster, but I know for sure it saves me a lot of time.
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Contents
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161 Keeping page numbers on top of master items3m 55s
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162 Adding automatic currency symbols in a table cell or before text3m 50s
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163 Make a pop-up footnote for your ebook3m 48s
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164 Deleting tabs at the beginning of paragraphs and applying a paragraph style3m 10s
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165 Five InDesign Presentation tips6m 28s
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089 Three great Object Styles for any designer8m 1s
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090 Choosing alpha channel image transparency2m 25s
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091 Adding and reading metadata for InDesign files3m 25s
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092 Adding ALT tags to your images6m 59s
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093 How to Place & Link a text frame's text but not its formatting7m 4s
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094 Setting the baseline position of a caption2m 39s
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051 Five things that should be in every new file5m 19s
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052 Forcing EPUB page breaks with invisible objects6m 21s
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053 Understanding component information6m 39s
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054 Creating running heads using section markers4m 16s
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055 Making a font with InDesign using the IndyFont script5m 20s
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056 Finding where that color is used7m 17s
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037 Updating a linked table without losing formatting5m 18s
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038 Creating electronic sticky notes4m 49s
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039 Moving master page items to the top layer for visibility2m 48s
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040 Five guide tricks that will impress your coworkers6m 18s
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041 Letting InDesign add the diacritics4m 21s
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042 Using single-cell table cells for custom paragraph formatting6m 2s
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