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.