Efficient, repetitive insertion of anchored objects

I'm using InDesign 5.5 on a Mac running OS 10.8.5 if that has anything to do with this issue. My proficiency with Id is relatively low, but I've learned how to format books and have published three of my own, am trying to finish up a fourth, and have done another for a writer friend. Here's the problem I cannot seem to solve:
At the start of every chapter I have the heading defined in a style, then a chapter graphic style, then the first paragraph of the main body in another style. I have some notes from the last time I did this a couple of years ago, and they indicate that I found a work flow that allowed me to:
1. With a chapter graphic positioned exactly where I want, copy it. What I expected to happen this time based on my previous experience was for this to copy not only the graphic, but the anchored position information as well.
2. Place the insertion point to the right of the next chapter heading and hit return.
3. With the chapter graphic set as the next style, the insertion point is now sitting where I want the graphic.
4. Paste the graphic and it's positioned where I want it.
5. Repeat this for each chapter without too much trouble.
But this time, two things happen that I'd like to avoid: 1) The graphic inserts with the right edge of the bounding box lined up with the centered insertion point, and 2) the text in the first paragraph is shoved down the page. I think what's happening is that the chapter graphic style is displaced so it's like I hit a return with that style active and I get two of them rather than the one I want.
I've been able to anchor the graphics by clicking on them with the Selection tool, then option clicking on the anchor to bring up the anchored object window, which never shows above or below line. I select that, have to change from left to center, then adjust the below spacing to get the distance I want between the bottom of the graphic and the first line of text, then change the extra chapter graphic style below the graphic to the main body style, and reposition the first paragraph where it needs to start.
Needless to say, this is going to get very old doing all that for 34 chapters, then repeat the process for a smaller graphic I'm using at every scene break, and there's a lot more of those.
I hope I've described this so that it makes sense, and I'd appreciate knowing how to solve it. Thank in advance,
Tosh
P.S. Hello Peter!

Thank you for the reply. I've taken 5 screenshots to illustrate what's happening:
#1 is shows the text insertion point in the chapter graphic style between the chapter heading and the first paragraph:
#2 is the result of pasting in the graphic: What I've been able to do before (at least that's what my notes day) is to have the graphic centered on the insertion point. But you can see how the insertion point has shifted to the left, and the right edge of the graphic is lined up with it.
#3 shows application of the object style. This is a step I hadn't been doing before, and it definitely saves time not having to use the options window to set above line/center/and above values.
#4 illustrates the extra spacing between the graphic and the first paragraph because the insertion point is in the chapter graphic style, not the style for the first paragraph. Especially confusing is that the chapter graphic style is centered, and the insertion point is justified left
#5 shows the application of the first paragraph style to the location of the insertion point.
This is the result I'm looking for, and as mentioned earlier, I remember having a workflow that allowed me to paste the graphic into the centered paragraph style and that's where it stayed.
I can do this longer workflow and get what I want, but it's labor intensive and there has to be a better way.
Tosh

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New technique to place multiple anchored objects in InDesign story

Hello,
For a while I have been trying to figure out how to insert multiple anchored objects into an Indesign story. As far as I can tell, you cannot copy multiple objects that have already been placed in a document (such as a multi-page pdf) into an InDesign story, but must copy and paste them one-by-one into the story. This is a problem for a project I am working on where I want to have a large number of 340x52 pt pdfs to flow throughout a document in a master text frame interspersed with text.
I have now found a solution for this issue that I thought I would share in case it would be helpful for anyone. It utilizes Automator actions for Mac OS X and Microsoft Word 2011 [2008 may work also, but I don't have a copy of that to test]; I am not good with scripting but perhaps similar solutions could be found for other systems and programs.
1. If you want to place a multipage pdf within a text frame, first it into individual files for each page (with Acrobat Pro or pdftk or something similiar).
2. Create an Automator service or program with the action "Create New Word Document". You can also use another automator action to save the document, or save it manually (to change the filename). In the finder, select the items you want, then run the service or drag them into the Automator program you have created.
3. Place the word document into your InDesign story. Your items will now be anchored objects ordered in your text frame as they were in the finder.
Please let me know if this is helpful or if anyone has suggestions for doing this process is a more efficient way. I am not sure, but it may be the case that this approach would only work on Macs, as I gather from this thread.

I might note that I am using InDesign CS 5, and importing from a document stored in docx format.

CS3 - Auto Anchored objects

Hi all,
I would like to speed up my workflow enormously. I have a very repetitive thing that I need to speed up somehow...
I receive supplied text that requires formatting. I have just about everything automated except inserting graphics into certain locations. I currently insert an object as an anchored object one by one wherever it needs to be put..
The things is, all the graphic objects are identical (the exact same file), and they appear hundreds of time throughout the document.
The objects are to all behave exactly the same way so a style could be set up - it's just the matter of placing the object hundreds of times every time I get new text to update the file with. So at the moment, I am spending way way way too much time individually placing each object one by one.
I'm not a highly experienced ID user, so I'm hoping I'm just missing something here. I've scoured tutorials and help and the web to no avail. Hence my post here.
Currently, they put the text code "grphc" where they want the little picture in the text supplied to me. I then do a search for "grphc" in the find function. It finds it, I then select this code and place the inline object. I then go back to the find function to show me the next code. It takes me straight to it, I then repeat the process of selecting the text code, place the object, find the next code, select the code, place the object, find the next code, select the text, place the object, find the next code, select it, place the thing, find the next, select it, place it... and so on and so on till my brain hurts through a very very repetitive operation. It hurts!.
Please help me automate this very time consuming and brain numbing repetitive action...
Like I said, I'm not a heavily experienced user of InDesign, so I'm hoping that I am simply missing something. (I can only hope)
I'm hoping that a very easy, almost 'one click' fix can replace the special code with this little grpahic.
I mean, I can find all occurrences of a given text in the document and replace it all in one hit with some other text, but it seems to not allow to replace text with a graphic.
please help. even if the answer is in front of my face & cannot see it..
Thanks very much in advance.
Graeme.

WOW!!!,
Thankyou Dave, that works a treat.
I must admit though, I am surprised that with the amount of power ID has with this Find/Replace function that it doesn't have the ability to find and replace with a graphic.
Maybe I should put a wish list to ID to add this find text and replace with an object feature...
Graeme.

Text wrap in anchored objects

In order to place text boxes relative to the spine, I have placed them as anchored objects.
But now, these text frames do not respect text wrap setting from objects outside of the anchored object.
I have made sure that ignore text wrap in text frame options is not checked.
Is this a bug?
And does anyone know a workaround?

In order to make my design indifferent to later added pages, I have placed all text frames and graphic placeholders as anchored objects, positioning them relative to spine.
When I now place an object on top of such an anchored text frame, text wrap is not working, even if i overide the master page item.
The only work around I have found is to copy the respective text frame and make the original master page item unvisible.
Is there not another way to to this?
For me, the best would be another way of placing text and graphic frames relative to spine.
Bus as soon as one overrides the master page item, the object is not placed anymore relative to spine if another page is inserted.

Callouts and anchored objects - there must be a better way to do this

I've spent a lot of time in the last six months rebuilding PDF files in InDesign. It's part of my ordinary responsibilities, but I'm doing a lot more of it for some reason. Because I'm sending the text of these rebuild documents out for translation, I like to keep all of the text in a single story. It really helps to have the text in "logical order," I think; when I'm prepping a trifold brochure, I try pretty hard to make sure that the order in which the readers will read the text is duplicated in the flow of the story throughout the ID document.
So, I'm rebuilding a manual that has a 3-column format on lettersize paper, and it's full of callouts. Chock full of 'em. They're not pull quotes, either; each of these things has unique text. Keeping in mind that I'd like the text in these callouts to remain in the same position in the text once I've linked all the stories and exported an RTF for translation, what's the best way to handle them? What I've been doing is inserting an emptly stroked frame as an anchored object, sized and positioned to sit above the text that is supposed to be called out. When my translations come back, they're always longer than the source document, so as I crawl through the text, I resize the anchored frames to match the size and position of the newly expanded translated text, and then nudge them into place with the keyboard.
There Has To Be a Better Way.
There is a better way, right? I'm not actually too sure. If I want to actually fill those anchored frames with text, I can't thread them into the story. I suppose that I could just thread the callout frames and assign two RTFs for translation instead of one, but then the "logical order" of my text is thrown out the window. So, I'm down to asking myself "what's more important? reduction of formatting time or maintenance of the flow of the story?" If there's something I'm missing that would let me dodge this decision, I'd love to hear about it. The only thing I can think of would work like this:
1) Duplicate callout text in the story with a custom swatch "Invisible"
2) Create "CalloutText" parastyle with "Invisible" swatch and apply it to callout text
3) Insert anchor for anchored frame immediately before the CalloutText content
4) Send it out for translation
5) While I'm waiting for it to come back, write a script that would (dunno if this is possible):
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   b) Copy one continguous instance of that style to the clipboard
   c) Look back in the story for the first anchor preceeding the instance of CalloutText
   d) Fill the anchored object with the text from the clipboard (this is where I'm really clueless)
   e) Apply a new parastyle to the text in the callout
   f) Continue stepping through the story looking for further instances of CalloutText
If this really is the only decent solution, I'll just head over to the Scripting forum for some help with d). Can any of you make other suggestions?

In-Tools.com wrote:
The use of Side Heads saves weeks of manual labor.
Yup, Harbs, that is exactly what I was describing. If I use the Side Heads plugin to set up a job, will my clients get a missing plug-in warning when they open up the INDD? Will roundtripping through INX strip the plugin but leave the text in the callout? (My clients don't care if the logical flow of the story is broken; it's just me.)
I'm just curious; seems like a pretty obvious purchase to me. I'll probably try to script a solution anyways, after I buy the plugin; that way I get to learn about handling anchored objects in scripts AND deliver the job on time!

Querying for a script insert multiple selected objects...

Is there a script or plugin which insert multiple selected objects in one new text frame with one click?
And is there a script or plugin which extract the content of anchored text frame out it's frame and replace it with it's frame. and extract selected text and insert it inside a new anchored text frame in it's place? (like convert text to table - convert table to text, but instead table we use text frame)

Hi,
Using OMB scripting to set attribute properties in a data mapping sort of defeats the purpose of utilizing a graphical user interface to define and set properties for a data mapping? Surely the GUI data mapping tool was created to get away from writing scripts and scripting would also require that you know the name of the data mapping, table operator and the set of attribute names for which you have to write one line of script to set each property value, i.e. 90 lines to set 90 attribute values.
Cheers,
Phil

TextWrap and Anchored Objects

Okay, I've been using InDesign since it was PageMaker 4.3 so I'm pretty familiar with the features and the intents behind them. Lately I've had a problem for which I can't seem to find a fully acceptable work-around. It involves text-wrapping anchored objects within a large, multi page flow of text.
Boiled down to a basic description of the issue, I need a graphic to appear on a page within a text block at a certain point, that is, at the top of a justified paragraph on the extreme right side of the column. The object occupies 7 lines of text, dropping down into the paragraph from line 1. The object needs to have a word wrap applied causing the text within the block to flow around it.
The problem is that as the document evolves, the quantity of text that precedes the paragraph holding the graphic changes. As text is added to preceding paragraphs, text advances through the text blocks to a point where the graphic now begins to be displayed beyond the bottom of the text block rather than jump to the next text block. Forcing the object to stay within the text block (by using the "Keep with top/bottom column boundaries") pushes the object up, effectively leaving the original location and invading the preceding paragraph.
The first solution I tried was to anchor the object 7 lines deep in the paragraph, then manually move it up to the first line using the "Y-offset" in the "Anchored Objects Options" palette. When I do this, the object's text wrap fails (!), always working only at line 7 and below and not moving up with the object.
My current solution is to not embed the object inline at all, but place it over the text block. This works but is unsatisfactory since the text is constantly changing, forcing me to stop and reposition the graphic - plus the 500 or so similar objects that follow in similar situations further along in the document.
Any ideas?

Unfortunately, no. If the anchor is inserted at the top of the paragraph (where I want the top of the image to be), the image won't flow to the next text block when any other part of the image (i.e., any part of the image that is not on the first line where the anchor is) is beyond the end of its text block.
Here is how I want the page to look:
Here, the graphic is not placed inline but sits over the text with textwrap set.
But rather than have all my objects placed over text, I want them inline. If I place the anchor anywhere below the first line of text, (again, the line where I want the top of the image to be), text wrap won't function above the anchor point regardless of how high I move the image:
If I place the graphic in its own paragraph above the first line of the paragraph, the result works well as long as the text preceding the anchor doesn't flow any further (i.e., no additional text is added). But as text is added and once the line holding the bottom of the photo flows to a new text block, one of two problems arises. If "Keep Within Top/Bottom Column Boundaries" is checked the graphic moves up:
If "Keep Within Top/Bottom Column Boundaries" is unchecked, the graphic begins to bleed out of the text box:
I can't believe there isn't a simple (or even complex) solution to this problem...

Un Anchoring objects in Indesign CS2 Using Apple script

Hi all,
I need to Un achor the object. I have the script which will un anchor the Text Frames but in case of
Rectangle i'm not able to unachor. My script will find out the Anchrored Text Frames and place its
contents to its position and then delete the frames. I can find out the Anchored Rectangles but i
cannot get its contents. Can anyone help me out to do this?
Thanks,
Jacintha

Hi,
I can select the page item ,If i ask for page items and its parent. but not getting its contents.
-- aframe is text frames in document
set Conts to paragraphs of page item i of aframe
set contents of first insertion point of parent of page item i to Conts
I need to get the contents of anchoring objects and place it in its position and then delete the anchoring object. Tried working on above code but not able to get its contents. Any solution?

Images as anchored objects in text

I use CS4 on a Mac. I'm working on a book with photos of my art in the text. Before I've used Place to insert all images. (I use Picasa to straighten and crop my photos, they are all jpgs in high resolution, the photos are in a separate folder on my Mac).
To make the pictures anchored objects in-line, I first place the graphic, then according to the instructions I cut, then paste in text, select image, then set the anchored object above the text etc.
http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/video_workshop/?id=vid0073
My question is what happens to the image when you cut and paste. Does it retain it's placed format, like file size and resolution? It seems my InDesign file should be bigger with the added images.
Should I be worried?

When use File>Place to insert an image to InDesign - InDesign creates a low-res thumbnail to act as a "placeholder" to the original image.
It's very cumbersome on the computer when viewing the images in full resolution within InDesign. As it could be displaying 10mb for each image and 10 images would 100 mb per page, quite a lot to render; for example.
Anchoring objects has no bearing on the file size (well maybe a little).
The file size and resolution is not affected when you place an image. But the Resolution is affected if you SCALE the image any amount.
If you go to the Window>Info panel and select an image then you can see TWO options ACTUAL and EFFECTIVE PPI.
Actual refers to what the original PPI of the image is (ppi = pixels per inch and refers to resolution)
And Effective shows the the PPI after the image has been scaled.
For example if you place a 72 ppi image and scale it 24% it will now be Effectively 300 ppi (100/24)*72=300
For printing you should ensure that the image quality is 300 ppi (it's a general rule of thumb and it's not entirely accurate but that's what most printing places operate at as a standard).
For the record - you should resave images as JPG if you make ANY alteration to them (as a rule of thumb) saving as JPG over and over can add jpeg artifacts to the image which will degrade the image over time, as jpeg is a lossy format (information is removed with each save). A better way would be to save as TIFF as this is a LOSSLESS format - in that no data is removed upon saving.
I wouldn't recommend Picassa for your image editing. You should get Photohsop or failing that a free open source program like GIMP.

Copy paste anchored objects in a table

Hi all!
I must design very often posters with a lot of brands logos (events sponsors) distribuited like anchored objects in the cells of a table.
Very frecuently, the list of brands changes after designed the poster, adding or deleting someones, and then i must replace the logos one by one.
I'm programming a script that moves the content of the cells, making space to the new inserts, or filling the space leaved by brands out. I use the "content" property of the object "cell", and it really works with text (its useful for me in others cases, anyway) but it makes absolutly nothing with the anchored objects.
Somebody have any idea that can help me?
Thanks for your help, and sorry for my english!
Jose

Oh, and what is very helpful:
The parent of an anchored object is a Character Object.
Example 1:
A text frame with an anchored object (the magenta square).
The text frame is selected.
If you ask for the count of characters in the text frame:
app.selection[0].characters.length;
The answer is "5"!
The anchor, that is indeed the anchored rectangle, is treated as a character.
If you select the anchored object and ask for its parent:
app.selection[0].parent;
The answer is "[object Character]".
To move such an anchored object without loosing its anchordness, you have to move the character.
In the above case, the character is characters[0] of the text frame. Or more precise, the characters[0] of texts[0] (all formatted text in the text frame) of the text frame. You also could go a step backward and say: in this case it's the characters[0] of texts[0] of the parentStory of the text frame
To move it somewhere else (e.g. to a cell of a table), you must move it to another Text object.
Every insertion point is a text object (like every character).
Example 2:
A table comes into play:
The text frame is still selected.
And the following code will move the anchored object (indeed the character) to the table:
var myTextFrame = app.selection[0];
var myTable = myTextFrame.parentStory.tables[0];
myTextFrame.characters[0].move(LocationOptions.AFTER, myTable.cells[0].insertionPoints[0]);
Situation after executing the snippet:
Hope that helps,
Uwe

Help...anchored objects in CS4 freezes Indesign

I was really excited to use anchored objects in a recent project where I wanted to insert a bunch of callout text boxes peppered throughout the document layout that would reflow with it's neighboring text as I made changes.
When I had about 4 text boxes placed, InDesign CS4 would freeze with the spinning rainbow wait cursor spinning forever. It would freeze just as I started entering settings in the "custom" anchored object dialogue window.
What am I doing wrong? Or is this a bug?
Thanks for any advice or suggestions.
grafxgirly

I've been working on a file I created for 4 hours. Saved properly many times, reopened and resaved with no problems. Now it won't open.
Every other file I have opens fine, but this one just freezes up the program. I tried recovering, deleting the recovery file, etc....
It sounds like Peter has it hand, but some possibilities are Preflight and SING; you can try disabling them both. What OS?
What version of InDesign? 6.0.6?

Anchored objects disappeared

My anchored objects inserted into text have all disappeared. All layers are on. The text is there but the objects are not. How can I get them back?

All layers are on
@Annie – this is not relevant, because anchored objects ("inline" or "custom" makes no difference) are tied to the layer of their parent text frame.
1. The objects could be "hidden".
There is a contriol for that to bring back all hidden objects on a spread:
alt + cmd + 3 (for InDesign on Mac OSX)
2. The objects could be set to "No Printing" and you look at your document with the "View / Overprint Preview" checked. You can control the "No Printing" in the Attributes Panel.
3. A combination of 1. and 2.
4. The objects are removed…
Could happen with a TEXT or GREP search/replace action that happens to include all anchor characters in your text.
5. …
Uwe

IndDesign CS2 Anchored objects issue

I am working on a 400 pg yearbook-like doc. I've got pictures with captions(grouped with paragraph and object styles)that need to stay with the text where I insert them. As I work though the pages inserting objects, they appear to adjust prior page layouts. The pages are set up with two columns of text and the text is set up to flow through all the pages of the document. Some of the grouped anchored objects span the entire width of the text box/column. There are also grouped anchored objects that only take up half the column width that don't seem to have the same affect on other pages as the ones that take up the entire column width. The grouped objects that do take up the whole column all go into their text listings at the same spot-at the end of a listing. Does anyone know what I am doing wrong or why these objects would affect prior pages and how I can stop them from doing that?

Not sure what you mean by affect. If it's just a couple of lines turning differently on the previous page I would put it down to the Adobe Paragraph composer. Try changing the affected paragraph to Single Line Composer in the Justification dialog and see if that stops it?

Grouping Anchored Objects

I have an anchored graphic image (using Object, Anchored Object, Insert) and need to add a text box under the graphic and a rectangle frame with a stroke on top of the image to highlight a portion of the image.
What I would love to do is anchor the graphic image and then group the text box and graphic rectangle to the anchored graphic and have all move together. NO LUCK, I guess you cannot select and group multiple objects if one of them is an anchored object.
The work arounds are
1) Anchor EACH of the three objects which works fine but takes a long time.
2) Group the objects and paste them "inline"
3) Group the objects and manually move them when your text moves.
Is there any way to group, attach or link objects to an anchored object so all of them move with the anchored object?
Have InDesign 3 and 2 (same results)

Right clicking on the anchored graphic and using the "Paste Into" option to paste the three grouped objects worked wonderfully. Thank you so much.

Anchored objects (haven't used them often enough!)

I haven't really used anchored objects a lot, but I want to start! I'm trying to make an achored frame to hold a photo since I will be adding lots of photos into columns and need to keep them aligned with the person's name. I've set the frame with a Custom position, X Relative to Column Edge and Y Relative to Line (Cap Height). Then I added text wrap. My problem is that the very first line refuses to wrap. What am I missing? I'm hoping to make an object style where I can insert these photo placeholders throughout. I imagine I've missed something obvious, but I just don't know what it is. Here's a screenshot of the column and box:
Help appreciated!
Thanks, Phyllis

That actually works much better (the inline option). :-) I think I originally started to try that but had gotten an error message about the negative values being too high (I was trying to enter the offset numerically). So thought that custom was the way to go. But this actually seems to be a much better way of handling it for this project. That'll leave me with only an occasional place where I manually have to stick in a box (there's a couple of paragraphs where 2 speakers are mentioned together so I need the boxes one on top of the other). So thanks that's great!!!
I'm trying to figure out the best application for each type of anchored graphic. I guess any time I want to wrap something at the beginning of a paragraph, I should aim for inline. And use custom for things like icons that stick to the column rules or something. Just thinking about how best to use these... I'm aiming for getting my layouts as easily editable as possible.
Thanks, Phyllis

Efficient, repetitive insertion of anchored objects

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