Coordinates x y copy paste Question

Question

Hi,
Is there a way to automatically show the coordinates of a box in Illustrator? I don't mean that i just need to know what the coordinates are... I know how to see them..
What I need is to have the x/y coordinates physically written and printed out and displayed right onto the canvas when I click the top left hand corner of square.
The only way I know how to achieve this is to copy and paste the coordinates on to the canvas each time. It there a faster more efficient way?
Please see attached illustration.

Answer 1

this version uses the document units, I should have thought of that.
I added a third decimal place, I figured it'd be useful with inches
if you use this a lot, consider recording an Action to play the script, you could assign a Shortcut Key to it.
// script.name = labelSelectedAnchors,jsx
// script.description = writes down the coordinates of each selected path point
// script.requirement = one or more anchor points selected
// script.parent = CarlosCanto // 01/01/2015
// script.elegant = false;
// https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1669676
#target "illustrator"
function main() {
    var idoc = app.activeDocument;
    var runits = getDocUnits ();
    var sel = idoc.selection;
    if (sel.length>0) {
        for (var a = 0; a<sel.length; a++) {
            var pgItem = sel[a];
            if (pgItem.typename == 'PathItem') {
                labelSelectedAnchors(pgItem, runits);
    else {
        alert('select one or more path anchors and try again');
main ();
function labelSelectedAnchors(pi /*pathItem*/, runits) {
    var sPP = pi.selectedPathPoints;
    var selAn = PathPointSelection.ANCHORPOINT;
    for (i=0; i<sPP.length; i++) {
        if (sPP[i].selected == selAn) {
            addAnchorLabel(sPP[i], runits);
function addAnchorLabel(pp /*path point*/, runits) {
    var idoc = app.activeDocument;
    var itext = idoc.activeLayer.textFrames.add();
    var x = pp.anchor[0];
    var y = pp.anchor[1];
    var xUV = new UnitValue(x, 'points');
    xUV.convert (runits);
    var yUV = new UnitValue(y, 'points');
    yUV.convert(runits);
    itext.contents = 'X: ' + roundnumber(xUV.value, 3) + ' ' + xUV.type + '\rY: ' + -roundnumber(yUV.value, 3) + ' ' + yUV.type;
    itext.left = x + 4;
    itext.top = y + 4;
function getDocUnits () {
    var idoc = app.activeDocument;
  var runits = idoc.rulerUnits;
  return runits.toString().split (".")[1].toLowerCase(); // points
function roundnumber(number, decimals) {
    rounded = (Math.round(number*Math.pow(10,decimals))/Math.pow(10,decimals));
    return rounded;