Comments on: Converting Nested Styles into Local Character Styles

By: orielwen

orielwen — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 16:54:46 +0000

I’ve just tried Harbs’s script in CS5 as I had a need for it. Sadly it seems to crash InDesign every time, even on a very simple test document.
Oh well, at least the tagging solution is still available.

By: lcoccoli

lcoccoli — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 18:22:13 +0000

The need change nested styles to local character styles just came up for me today. I knew I had seen this post before, so I searched nested styles and found it right away. David, the tagging solution is awesome, but Harbs’ script just saved me hours of work.

I love this site.

Thanks, guys!

By: Old Jeremy

Old Jeremy — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:54:49 +0000

Before I read this, I ignorantly assumed that mapping styles to tags would not respect non-local styles (i.e. formatting applied via a nested style). It simply never occurred to me that it would.

Knowing it does has really saved me time and a lot of tedious work. Thanks to everyone at InDesign Secrets! (And Harbs as well, because I’ll probably have to use that script sooner or later.)

By: Phil Frank

Phil Frank — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 19:40:33 +0000

This is very cool. I didn’t need it yesterday, but I needed it today, and there it was. Thank you! I hadn’t realized until just now that exporting to epub (in CS3 since it’s broken in CS4) stripped out nested style formatting.

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 13:09:37 +0000

Thank you, Harbs! In my quick tests, it does appear to work well. As you said, it does wipe out any local character styles applied on top of the nested styles, but until Adobe gives us multiple character styles (please?!) that’s as good as we can expect.

By: Harbs

Harbs — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 12:58:01 +0000

Oh. By the way, I did basic testing in CS3 and CS4. I think it will work in CS2 as well, but I did not test…

By: Harbs

Harbs — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 11:02:17 +0000

This should have been a very easy script.

You would not believe the number of bugs I had to work around to make this script work! But, here it is… Enjoy! (and use with care…)

I used the underline gap color to identify the character styles. I think it’s sufficiently rarely used to be a relatively safe identifier…

By: Nye Hughes

Nye Hughes — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 17:42:37 +0000

Whoops! I should read more carefully before commenting, my script works with Grep styles, rather than nested styles. I suspect that the limitations of scripting that Harbs describes would make this difficult to script. N.

By: Nye Hughes

Nye Hughes — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 17:28:32 +0000

Hi David,

I think you must have been remembering the script I posted in a comment to Downsaving Snippets post . It was an applescript but Adi Ravid kindly created a javascript version (however, I’ve not tested this version).

The original applescript does not rely on setting a rarely used property as Harps suggested would be required in his point 1. However, I think it would overwrite any manually applied styles (Harps’s point 2). In my experience this does not usually matter too much, but, as with any script, caution should be applied before pressing the button!

Anyway, I hope people find of use…

Nye

By: Harbs

Harbs — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 10:34:18 +0000

This is something which has bugged me for a long time.

There’s no direct way to “see” which text has nested styles applied even with scripting.

In CS4, you can search for nested styles, but InDesign only finds them if they are the first word of the paragraph. I’m not sure if this is a bug or a halfway implemented feature…

It’s relatively easy to write a script which would find text which apparently has a nested style applied, but there’s two problems:

1) The script would have to set a relatively rarely used property to find the text with the style applied. It would always be possible that the said property would be otherwise used, so the script can’t be foolproof.

2) The bigger problem is that nested styles a “nestable” meaning that you can have text which has both a nested style and a character style applied directly. As long as InDesign doesn’t have the ability to apply more than one character style to text, applying the nested style directly will remove any previously applied character styles. This can easily change formatting in undesirable ways…

Are you still sure you want this script?