From the course: InDesign Secrets
229 Batch converting ID files to current version with the Book panel - InDesign Tutorial
From the course: InDesign Secrets
229 Batch converting ID files to current version with the Book panel
- I don't know about you, but I have at least six different versions of InDesign on my hard drive and files saved in various versions too. I want to show you a way that you can convert all of your old version documents to your current version document in one fell swoop or maybe two or three fell swoops because this is a very common problem these days with the Creative Cloud coming out with new versions every few months. Let's say, for example, that you're on CS6, InDesign CS6, which I have open right here on screen. And here's just a simple document, and I'm going to close it right now. Let's say that you have all of your documents in CS6 or most of them, and you have finally moved to InDesign CC. Right now I'm at 2015, CC 2015. You know that if you open up a document in InDesign CC 2015 or any later version, you choose Open, and you choose an early document like, say, this one called simple that I just had open. Well, we're missing some images, but that's okay. But here's the problem is that it says converted. What a pain, and so to save it in 2015, you really need, if I just choose Save, then it says, "Where do you want to save it "and what do you want to name it?" And sometimes it won't remember where you pulled it up from, and it's such a pain in the butt. So I'm going to click Cancel, and I'm going to close this without saving any changes. Here is a faster way to convert all these without having to go through and saving each individual document. All right, start in your older programs, so in this instance, CS6. This is where the format that all of your InDesign files are in that you want to convert, and go to the File menu and choose New, Book. We're going to collect all of the CS6 documents or a whole bunch of them. It could be a couple hundred if you wanted. Right now I'm just going to do about 10, and we're going to add them to this book. I'll call this to be converted and save it on my desktop. We're not actually going to do anything with this book. We're not going to renumber chapters or anything crazy like that. We're just going to use it as a collection. So I've created the book. One thing you want to do before you start adding documents is go to the book panel menu, go down to Book Page Numbering Options, and turn off Automatically Update Page and Section Numbers. You don't want the book panel to do anything to your documents that you are not in control of, such as this. We're not actually creating a book. We're just using it as a way to collect documents. And then you can click the plus symbol to add documents from your hard drive, or you can go to your hard drive to the File Explorer or to the Finder and drag and drop files over here. Because my folders are scattered in a few different locations, I'm actually going to do it like this. So I'm going to shift, click these and then hold down the command or control key to get these other guys because I don't want to have to move all these to a single directory. I want to keep them in place and overwrite them so that they're up-to-date with the new version. So I'll add all those. And while I have these open here, you see it didn't renumber any pages, I'm going to come down here, and I'm going to choose Automatic Document Conversion. In my experience, I have to choose that again in the next step, but that's all I've done. You just go through your hard drive, you collect them all. You might have 200 documents you want to convert in one fell swoop. Go ahead and do that. And close it, save your changes to the book. This is all done in your old version of the program. Now go to the new version, here is CC 2015, and open the book. Don't open the files, open the book. File, Open, Desktop, to be converted. Going to get a little dialog box reminding us to choose Automatic Document Conversion and click OK. Everything seems to be the same. Automatic Document Conversion is still turned on. Now what you need to do is do an action that affects every single document in this book. And the one thing I found that works the best is to choose Update Numbering, Update Chapter and Paragraph Numbers because we've turned off Book Page Numbering Options, so this doesn't usually affect anything. I'll go ahead and do that. And now it's thinking, and it's going through here, and it's putting little dot as it's finishing working on these documents. That's it, we're done. We can close the book. I'm not going to save any changes. And now when I open up the documents, let me stay in CC 2015. I'll go to File, Open, and let's open up that simple one again. And missing sources, yes, of course. But, look, no more converted. Let's try another one. Let's go into arthistory.indd. Missing images, that's fine. No converted, it is a CC 2015 file. Isn't it incredible? I love this feature. Now, one thing is that there is a script that could make life even easier than this because you don't need to create a book and do any of that kind of stuff. It is written by Peter Kahrel, who is a wonderful person who writes lots of free scripts for InDesign users. It's called batch convert or batch-process. The problem that I found with using this, though it does work in CC 2015, is that, though you can point to one master folder and say include subfolders and you can overwrite existing files, it doesn't remember the subfolder structure, so it doesn't put them in those subfolders. It puts them all one layer above. I don't know what the problem is. I would check with Peter Kahrel's script first if you need to do a whole lot of these to see if he's updated this or maybe just practice it on your own with some sample files. And this might be a little faster than working with the book feature, but if this hasn't been updated or you just want to do it really quickly without having to install any scripts, go ahead and try this cool method of using the book panel to convert your documents.
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Contents
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229 Batch converting ID files to current version with the Book panel6m 9s
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230 Getting around InDesign limitations6m 46s
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231 Creating better callout lines with effects and object styles5m 47s
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232 Swapping column and row information in tables6m 9s
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233 Making bigger text link targets4m 52s
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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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111 Packaging images on the pasteboard3m 32s
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112 Automatically updating figure references for books6m 9s
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113 Adding Tool Tips to your form fields in InDesign3m 21s
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114 Setting poetry, flush left, center on longest line3m 54s
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115 Use bookmarks to navigate long documents in production4m 57s
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107 Using the same keyboard shortcut for two different commands with the Context feature5m 22s
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108 Making a text highlighter3m 33s
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109 Updating an interactive PDF without losing work done in Acrobat5m 30s
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110 Adding custom text at the beginning of each line automatically4m
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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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047 Specifying an exact amount of space between objects5m 17s
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048 Fixing last lines that are too short8m 16s
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049 Creating web graphics from your InDesign artwork7m 20s
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050 Using “No Language” to suppress unwanted hyphenation, spell-checking, and smart quotes2m 48s
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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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027 Creating running heads using variables5m 1s
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028 Live Caption tips and tricks8m 3s
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029 Making professional drop caps10m 37s
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030 Making two-state buttons in interactive documents5m 5s
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031 Moving pages from one document to another3m 15s
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032 Wrapping bulleted text around a curve5m 58s
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007 Selecting through and into objects using cmd-click and Select Above/Below5m 46s
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008 Some great tips and tricks for the Swatches panel9m 40s
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009 Saving down for backward compatibility with INX and IDML5m 54s
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010 Using the INX and IDML formats to fix problems4m 46s
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