Drawing - ID CS3 - suddenly text frame edges print . . .

Think it happened when I placed a .5 border around the whole page, there's probably 25 or 30 frame boxes on page - how do I get rid of the boxes printing?

It sounds like you selected all the frames on the page when you added the border (instead of just the large outside frame), or you set the stroke attribute in the object style. You need to figure out where it happened and remove the stroke.

Similar Messages

How do I create a series of text frames using values from Excel list?

First of all, this is the very first script I'm attempting to write from scratch. I'm completely green at scripting, and I've picked up a few snippets from Adobe's ID scripting guide, but nothing has really stuck yet relating to this particular objective.
My supervisor keeps a master list of ad spaces, with the name of the account, how wide the space is, and how tall the space is, all in an Excel sheet. These spaces can number in the hundreds, and I am stuck manually drawing one rectangle for every space, which takes a very long time.
I'd like to create/have help creating a script that will take these values and "automagically" draw these spaces in the form of text frames, with the width (in columns) and the height (in inches) defined by the values in the master list, as well as the name of each account appearing in the subsequent text frames.
The script doesn't necessarily need to be able to pull the values straight from the Excel sheet; I can transfer the values to a support text file if needed, or directly into the script, changing it as I need it. A big thing (if it is not able to pull right from an Excel sheet) is that the number of spaces changes weekly, and so do the accounts, and the width and the height. Accordingly, it would be ideal if the values from the sheet could be changed easily, so as to create a new set of spaces as needed.
Positioning for each space is not crucial, only height and width. If they all appear on top of each other on the same page, that will be a result for me. The main idea is to not have to draw them all manually, one by one.
To me, this sounds like a tall order, but hopefully some experienced scripters out there can assist me, as I wish to become experienced as well.
So, the TL;DR version:
- Script needs to draw a series of text frames.
- Text frames dimensions need to be defined by width and height values from Excel sheet.
- Text frames must have account name as contents (from account names in Excel sheet).
- Accounts, width and height change every week in the Excel sheet, so must be relatively easy to exchange all of the values.
- The width values are on the Excel sheet as columns. It would be ideal if the script could convert those numbers into multiples of columns as needed.
- (Optional) Script can pull values directly from Excel sheet.
- (Optional) Script can define text frame fill color as gray. (If it works as I think it will, I could just select all the resulting text frames myself and set them all to gray at once... I'm not that lazy )
Thanks in advance to whomever can assist in any possible way, even if it is just a push in the right direction. This script will save 1-2 hours of tedium every week.

Sound like the perfect thing for InDesign Scripting.
I would copy the Excel contents into a text file, to get a format that is easily read from InDesign, and there will automatically be a TAB for each "cell" just using copy/paste.
Here is a piece of code, that you perhaps could go on with (adding variable to change pages and location on page, and other stuff).
The readFileLineByLine function, can be easily re-used with any function using "callback". You simply supply the function to it, that you want to be executed for every line of text that is read:
const COLUMN_WIDTH = 2; // Define the column width in inch
var pageIndex;
var textFramesExported; // not implemented.
// Add a new dokument. Set myDoc to app.activeDocument to use
// the current document instead of creating a new one.
var myDoc = app.documents.add();
// The doSomethingWithTextRow function is called upon for every line of text read.
readFileLineByLine('c:\\test.txt', doSomethingWithTextRow);
function doSomethingWithTextRow(row){
    // We expect the text line to be TAB separated (\t = TAB). We get that from just copying the contents of an
    // excel file into a text document.
    var cells = row.split('\t');
    var companyName = cells[0]; // The Company name in the first slot of the array
    var width = COLUMN_WIDTH * cells[1];
    var height = cells[2];
    // Create a new text frame for every row handled
    if (pageIndex==undefined) pageIndex = 0; // Count up when you have exported a number of texts, I leave this for you to do.
    var newTextFrame = myDoc.pages[pageIndex].textFrames.add();
    newTextFrame.contents = companyName;
    // The text frame is created in the top left corner.
    newTextFrame.geometricBounds = [0, 0, height + ' in', width + ' in']; // Top, Left, Bottom, Right
    // You might want to move the textframes to other positions, keeping track of how many you put out per page.
    newTextFrame.move( [10, 10] );
function readFileLineByLine(path, callbackFn){
    var myFileIn = new File(path);
    if (File.fs == 'Windows'){
        // This was probably added to recognize UTF-8 (even without its start marker?)
        myFileIn.encoding = 'UTF-8';
    myFileIn.open('r');
    var myEncoding = myFileIn.encoding;
    try{
        if (!myFileIn.exists){
            throw('Missing file: ' + myFileIn.fsName)
        var ln = '';
        while(!myFileIn.eof){
            // Read the lines from the file, until an empty line is found [now as a remark].
            ln = myFileIn.readln()
            // if(ln !='' && ln!='\n'){
               // Call the function supplied as argument
               callbackFn(ln);
    }catch(e){
        alert(e);
        gCancel = true;
    finally{
        myFileIn.close();
The file in C:\ in my example was saved as UTF-8 and looks like this (showing hidden characters):
Message was edited by: Andreas Jansson

Hide Frame Edges CS3 Tiger G5 processor

Everything I have read seems to indicate that COMMAND+H does not hide frame edges, it hides the entire INDD CS3 app. BUT this is only happening while running Leopard 10.5 on an intel processor machine.
It is happening to me running Tiger 10.4, G5 processor.
What is troubling is that the view menu still shows COMMAND+H is the hide frame edges command. It does not show CONTROL+COMMAND+H as this forum indicated.
NOW the keyboard shortcuts under the edit meny shows CONTROL+COMMAND+H is the hide indesign key command.
So what I have going on is indesign hides when I do a COMMAND+H AND it hides when I do a CONTROL+COMMAND+H!
SO HOW DO I HIDE FRAME EDGES USING A KEYBOARD COMMAND?

Well I did go through the menus and that's what spurred my question.
The VIEW menu states that the keyboard shortcut "COMMAND+H" toggles hide/show frame edges but is does not. It hides the entire application.
"W+SELECTION Tool" works ok if "show frame edges" is already toggled on.
I need to see where the frame edges are for non stroked TEXT boxes in a customer supplied file.
I'd like to be able to toggle show/frame edges on/off without mousing and have the guides toggled off. Perhaps the "W" thing will work and I'll try it but the "COMMAND+H" shortcut is still wrong. CS2 works fine, what the view menu shows in CS3 is wrong. Same machine has both applications loaded so it is not an OS/processor issue. Appears to be an oversite in the CS3 application.
NEWS FLASH
I just found that if I do an OPTION+COMMAND+H, the finder and all other applications will hide, I can then immediately do a COMMAND+H to show/hide Frame edges. If I go to the finder or other application then back to indesign the "hide indesign" behavior takes place.
So it looks like I must first hide all other active applications (OPTION+COMMAND+H), then toggle the frames using the COMMAND+H.

Indesign CS3 text frame parameters and export PDF

could use some help with the following:
I need to edit and export a large number (7000) Indesign documents (one page)
1. check for locked text frames and unlock
2. group all text frames
3. set grouped text frames at x=8 millimeters, y 10 milimeters
4. export the documents to PDF in a subfolder called "Out"
5. save and close the documents in the same subfolder as an Indesign CS3 document (orig is CS2)
This is what I've been trying soo far:
Now only checking one text frame - should be all text frames
"close document 1 saving yes" doesn't work because the originals are from CS2
I get a PDF called "Adobe Indesign SC3"
set processFolder to choose folder with prompt "Choose a folder that contains Innd Docs to process"
tell application "Finder"
if not (exists folder "OUT" of processFolder) then
make new folder at processFolder with properties {name:"OUT"}
end if
set the destination_folder to folder "OUT" of processFolder as alias
end tell
tell application "Finder"
try
set listFiles to (files of contents of processFolder) as alias list
on error
set listFiles to (files of contents of processFolder) as alias as list
end try
repeat with thisFile in listFiles
tell application "Adobe InDesign CS3"
with timeout of 120 seconds
activate
set properties of view preferences to {horizontal measurement units:millimeters, vertical measurement units:millimeters, ruler origin:page origin}
open thisFile
set myDoc to document 1
set docName to name
tell myDoc
set transform reference point of layout window 1 to top left anchor
set myBox to text frame 1 of page 1
set properties of myBox to {locked:false}
move myBox to {8, 10}
end tell
export document 1 format PDF type to (destination_folder as string) & docName & ".pdf" using PDF export preset "[Drukwerkkwaliteit]" without showing options
close document 1 saving yes
tell application "Finder" to move thisFile to destination_folder with replacing
end timeout
end tell
end repeat
end tell
end
end
Any help is greatly appreciated - Doing this manually is a lot of work!!!!!
Peter

You're asking for the name of the application, not the document -- you need to do it after your "tell myDoc". You could also get the name from the alias you open, rather than the open document, something like: repeat with thisFile in listFiles set oldDelims to AppleScript's text item delimiters set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {":"} set docName to text item -1 of (thisFile as Unicode text) set AppleScript's text item delimiters to oldDelims You should also move your "set properties of view preferences" line to after your "tell myDoc". -- Shane Stanley <[email protected]>

[JS][CS3] Change the content type of a text frame

Hi,
a bit basic maybe but I'm stuck on this from an hour...
I need a textFrame to become a graphic object.
The textFrame has no content.
How can I change the contentType on that object?
Thanks anticipately.

This looked like an interesting challenge, so I'm taking a shot at it. I created a new document and added three text frames (unpopulated) to the first page. I tagged them "Image", "Caption" and "credit". I then exported as a snippet, deleted the document and opened another new one. Then I placed the snippet (so far, everything has been manual -- no scripts) and indeed, the snippet placed and the frames were added to the document's structure and were properly tagged -- the three tags were automatically created by the action of placing the snippet.
So, let's duplicate this in a script. Even though I know exactly where the snippet is, I'm going ask the user to find it. That way, I eliminate the issue of getting the path to the snippet wrong:
var myDoc = app.documents.add();
var myPage = myDoc.pages[0];
var myPlacePoint = [myPage.marginPreferences.left, myPage.marginPreferences.top];
var mySnippetFile = File.openDialog("Choose the snippet");
if (mySnippetFile == null) { exit() }
var mySnippet = myPage.place(mySnippetFile, myPlacePoint);
And that worked. The snippet is on the page exactly where I wanted it. So, now we need to find the text frame that has the "image" tag. First, we must explore just what mySnippet consists of.
OK, it's an array of three stories. That's a tad weird. Why isn't it an array of three text frames? I wonder what would happen if two of the frames in the snippet were threaded -- but let's address that later after we solve the immediate issue. The point is that we know that the snippet consists of three separate text frames that aren't threaded. So:
for (var j = mySnippet.length - 1; j >= 0; j--) {
     var myTag = mySnippet[j].associatedXMLElement.markupTag.name;
     alert(myTag);
And this gives me the three tags (and reminds us that when you tag a text frame you're also tagging the story that holds it. So:
var myDoc = app.documents.add();
var myPage = myDoc.pages[0];
var myPlacePoint = [myPage.marginPreferences.left, myPage.marginPreferences.top];
var mySnippetFile = File.openDialog("Choose the snippet");
if (mySnippetFile == null) { exit() }
var mySnippet = myPage.place(mySnippetFile, myPlacePoint);
for (var j = mySnippet.length - 1; j >= 0; j--) {
     var myTag = mySnippet[j].associatedXMLElement.markupTag.name;
     if (myTag === "Image") {
          var myFrame = mySnippet[j].textContainers[0];
          myFrame.contentType = ContentType.graphicType;
          break;
And that does the job.
Thomas,
You were very close but you forgot that the text frames that make up a story are addressed as textContainers from CS3 onwards. Your code would have worked in CS2.
Dave

Indesign CS3 what script for Break Out Text Frame ??

hi expert,
Indesign CS3 can Break Out Text Frame or Have Script ??
like this...
http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/905/20080517085017hb3.jpg
thank for tell

you mean - convert/split multicolumn TextFrame to separated TextFrames ?
for PC or MAC ?
robin
www.adobescripts.com

Keeping descenders inside text frames (CS3)

Hi -- I have what I am sure is a very old question, but it's one I have been unable to find an answer for.
Is there a way to keep descenders from falling outside the bottom of a text frame? Our users run their text frames all the way to the bottom of the pages, and the descenders often get wiped in the printing process.
Any creative solutions that do not require a lot of manual action by the users? Having them manually adjust the text frames seems quite silly considering how sophisticated InDesign is.
thanks

Any creative solutions that do not require a lot of manual action by the users? Having them manually adjust the text frames seems quite silly considering how sophisticated InDesign is.
Are you by any chance familiar with the acronym PEBCAK? If you have control over the templates your users are using, you can define the Basic Text Frame object style to have some inset at the bottom of the frame. (I found the handy add-bottom-inset solution here, with the Google search terms "indesign descender outside of frame".) But there is nothing forcing your users to use the Basic Text Frame style, or even from editing said style themselves.
I can imagine a wide variety of solutions to this issue - another approach would be a Preflight Profile that had the "Bleed/Trim Hazard" option checked, and that had aggressive settings for "Bottom." But none of them are foolproof (i.e. users can turn Preflight off), so the root of your issue must be addresssed with InDesign operator education.

Why is my text frame edge showing when I print?

My text frame edge shows up sometimes when it overlaps another frame. It doesn't show up in the document when I am creating it, but it shows up when I print. It is not a solid line all around the frame, instead, it just shows up in small lines once in awhile. I have attached a picture showing the black dashed lines through the words "pow" and "baby. Please let me know what I should be doing differently!

Could be the printer (do the lines stay in the same place on every print? How about if you rotate the page 180?) or they could be transparency flattening artifacts, in which case exporting to PDF with live transparency and printing that might work better than printing direct from ID.

Non-printing text frame for use in exported pdf

Hi everyone,
I have a couple of words in a text frame and I've set the text frame to be be non-printing in the attributes panel. I was hoping that by doing this, that when I exported to pd, it would show in the pdf file but not print, but as it happens it doesn't show at all in the pdf.
Is there a way to mark a text frame as non-printing in Indesign but still have it show in the pdf and not print in the pdf?
Would be grateful for any advice.

It might work to put it on it's own layer, mark the layer as non-printing, so it won't print from ID, but export a layered PDF (you might have to include non-printing layers to get it inthe PDF, but I don't think so). In Acrobat pro you can then change the layer properties to visible, but non-printing. It's a real pain to do this.

ID CS3 - text wrap doesn't work at the end of a long multi-columned text frame

Did a search - don't think this specific issue has been addressed:
We design large graphics often used on walls. When working with a text frame that that was 11 feet long and had 8 columns, text wrap would not work on an image placed in the last column. The same image with the same text wrap applied will work fine anywhere else in the text frame. I found that if I shortened the width of the text frame a little bit at a time eventually it would work, but there doesn't seem to be a specific cut-off width - sometimes the last column won't text wrap when the frame is 115 inches wide and sometimes it doesn't work when the frame is only 80 inches wide. Again, all of the other columns work fine. I have tried all of the obvious stuff, the only variable between the columns that wrap and the one that doesn't is it's position at the end of the text frame.
We have gotten around this issue by using multiple threaded frames instead of one long frame with multiple columns, but I am curious if anyone else has run into this or might know what the issue is.
thanks

Did a search - don't think this specific issue has been addressed:
We design large graphics often used on walls. When working with a text frame that that was 11 feet long and had 8 columns, text wrap would not work on an image placed in the last column. The same image with the same text wrap applied will work fine anywhere else in the text frame. I found that if I shortened the width of the text frame a little bit at a time eventually it would work, but there doesn't seem to be a specific cut-off width - sometimes the last column won't text wrap when the frame is 115 inches wide and sometimes it doesn't work when the frame is only 80 inches wide. Again, all of the other columns work fine. I have tried all of the obvious stuff, the only variable between the columns that wrap and the one that doesn't is it's position at the end of the text frame.
We have gotten around this issue by using multiple threaded frames instead of one long frame with multiple columns, but I am curious if anyone else has run into this or might know what the issue is.
thanks

Problem with text frame dropshadow not completely printing to pdf file.

Hi and thanks for your speedy replies!
I am editing a file that had altered corner text frames with a .25 inset and a drop shadow added, .05 stroke and paper swatch. When I deleted text everything shifted so I had to recreate the special frames on select pages. These new text frames are not showing the top and left sides of the frames when saved to pdf file. The right and bottom drop shadow are showing. What am I missing?
Cheers!

I am using the latest version in CC. I tried several exports directly from ID, PDF/X-3:2002, PDF/X-1a:2001 and the low res setting, all with no changes. None showed the left or top border on the frames in question.
So I was getting the first screen shot instead of the second which other similarly formatted frames showed. I checked every setting I could find and they were all the same. The problem just occurred after the point in the doc that I had made changes resulting in some pages being deleted and the page formatting being thrown off which I corrected with the appropriate saved page formats. But when I went to set up the frame dropshadow and accompanying stroke and swatches, the outline just would not show in the pdf although it appeared to be showing in ID.
I've since discovered a work around for the editing so no pages were deleted, but I need to figure out why this happened and what I am not seeing. Perhaps a setting to show the border? Or maybe it is some overall setting that I need to be looking for? Just weird, weird, weird...

Selecting a Text Frame in another file (JS/CS3)

Hi, I'm a newbie so this is probably a dumb question.
I'm trying to copy the contents of a text frame in another ID file and copy/paste them into another text frame of my active document. Every example I find creates a NEW text frame and copies it and they work fine but I'm having trouble selecting the text frame or its contents (it's the only object in the document) in the already existing document.
The section I'm struggling with is:
var mySourceSlugDocument = app.open(File("/Macintosh HD/Users/Shared/Testfile.indd"));
var mySourceSlugPage = mySourceSlugDocument.pages.item(0);
var mySourceSlugFrame = mySourceSlugPage.pages.item(0);
app.select(mySourceSlugFrame.parentStory.texts.item(0));
app.copy();
app.activeDocument.close();
I'm doing something wrong here. It doesn't like the 'parentStory' in the select line. I'd be happy with a way of just doing a 'select all' and being able to paste it into the new document with a variable name so I can edit it.
Cheers,
G.

I think the third line should be:
var mySourceSlugFrame = mySourceSlugPage.textFrames.item(0);
Note though that you don't actually need to select/copy/paste. You can use duplicate().
Dave

CS3 VB how to get reference to a text frame?

Hi there,
I got a text frame in a document with a table inside. In first cell of the table there is another text frame with table. How to get a reference to the first text frame from the frame inside of the cell?
text frame in a cell has a character as parent, character has a cell as parent, cell has table as a parent - in this place there should be the right text frame as a parent of a table, but unfortunatly there is a story! so any idea how to get the text frame from there?
regards

thx again Harbs,
believe me - I am watching all stuff at the watch window of VB6 - there is not even one insertion point which has a ParentTextFrames - if I try to adres it I get an error. VisualBasic do not allow syntax like InsertionPoints[1] - it allows something like this:
InsertionPoints(1) but it is the same like InsertionPoints.Item(1). In both cases it doesn't works - all object has ParentTextFrames.Count = 0.
Anyway I found a solution for my problem:
innerFrame.Parent.ParentStory.TextContainers.Item(1) is the right text frame - don't ask me why....
regards

InDesign CS3: How do i add a new text frame to an existing threaded story?

I have a table that is much too large to be in an existing story (my document is currently formatted in 2 columns, but the table that I need to insert needs to span across an entire page) so I had to create a separate text frame for it. What I need to do is break the text thread and reroute the story so that the table is included. Is there a way to do this?

With the selection tool click the outport of the frame you want before the table, then the inport of the frame that should have the table, then the outport of that frame and the inport of the one that should follow.
You'll need to put the table into a separate paragraph, and that paragraph should be set to start in a new frame, as should the one that follows (you can also accomplish the frame transitions by inserting frame breaks).
Peter

CS3/4, JS Amateur question: how remove all empty text frames?

I'm an amateur, and thought it would be a straightforward matter to write a script that simply deletes all empty text frames in all of a document's stories. Here's my second attempt:
var myDocument = app.activeDocument;
var myStories = myDocument.stories;
for (i = 0; i < myStories.length; i++){
var myStory = myStories[i];
var myTextFrames = myStory.textContainers;
for (j = myTextFrames.length - 1; j >=0; j--) {
if (myTextFrames[j].contents == "") myTextFrames[j].remove();
The trouble is, sometimes it works as intended, but sometimes, with multiple stories, it needs to be run more than once. Can anyone explain why that is?
Thanks -- Jeremy

[Jongware] wrote:
(Bit of a Johnny-come-lately, but anyway )
AHA! -- This is a great help. It was driving me up the wall, and I don't know why it didn't work for me last night. Maybe it's because I was counting through stories in the wrong direction. Anyhow, I see how it works now, and I'm very grateful for the help.
By the way Harbs, I used all three of your suggestions because I had spent far too much time tapping away at that nut with my little toy hammer. I vented my frustration by using all three of your sledgehammers. In particular, I made sure it left a single empty text frame where it was, as such a frame might be used as a graphic. (Although in the past, I've found an empty story can be a sneaky place for a rogue font to hide. The insertion point just in front of the "end of story" character can have a paragraph style applied, with its associated font, but "Find" won't find any characters with that paragraph style or font applied!)
Thanks to all again -- Jeremy

Drawing - ID CS3 - suddenly text frame edges print . . .

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