Find Overset Text Fast
March 10th, 2008Sarah wrote,
Just wondering if InD (CS3) has anything that will search for overset text? I know when you export it to a pdf it will notify you, but is there a search within InDesign?
There’s a way to search for overset text in an InDesign file, but it’s not on the surface … that is, there’s no user interface for it, like a checkbox in Find/Change or anything. (Maybe in CS4? Fingers crossed.) For now we end-users have to depend on plug-in and script developers to give us a solution. And there are many out there.
The plug-in company RogueSheep, for example, has a free Javascript called RSCheckForOversetText you can download. It’s for CS1 and CS2 (Mac/Windows), so for CS3 you’ll need to store the script in a Version 4.0 Scripts folder you create within the program’s Scripts > Scripts Panel folder. To run it, double-click it in your Scripts panel which you open from Window > Automation.
If the script detects any overset text frames, it puts a rubylith-like box under each one to help you quickly zero in on them:
By the way, the pink boxes are placed on a new, bottom-most layer called RS Overset Markers which the script creates, as well as the RGB color that fills the box. Nothing touches the actual frames in your document.
Since the box markers are on their own layer, you can hide that layer before printing or exporting to PDF. Also, once you fix an overset and run the script again, it deletes the marker it had placed behind that overset frame.
I should note that RogueSheep offers this free script and others (on the same page as the link to the script above) as examples of scripts that can be run with their commercial InEventScript plug-in, which gave CS1/CS2 users the ability to associate any script with an InDesign “event” (command) automatically, such as printing or saving. Adobe added this functionality to InDesign CS3 scripters, so RogueSheep ceased development of InEventScript.
There are overset-related plug-ins available, such as DTP Tool’s TextCount and SoftCare’s Overset Manager. They aren’t free, but they offer a lot of neat features that go beyond the simple detection of overset frames. You might want to download their free trial versions to see how those additional functions might help your workflow.
If you export to PDF, InDesign will bark at you and tell you there is overset text and give you the page number too.
There is from a swiss company a free scriptcollection called moonbox. There in is a script called “moonOver” which let you jump direct to the overset text.
The only problem: it’s german…
Direct download-link
http://www.ulrich-media.ch/downloads/dokumente/moonbox.2-0.zip
>The only problem: it’s german…
That’s a problem only if you don’t know German
Just for information.
I’m Austrian! : )
Austrian, eh?
G’day mate! Let’s put another shrimp on the barbie!
/End awesome movie reference
To find overset text without using a script, select the text box, type command-Y, and the story editor will show the overset text below a red line.
Having said that, we here use SoftCare’s Overset Manager, which will display the overset when you click on a text box. The overset displays in the same column width as the text box you select. It’s not perfect but it works pretty good.
Steve
One other option: Make sure you’re not in Preview mode, then zoom way, way, out. The red overset marker will appear at the same size regardless of zoom level so at a very small zoom size it should be quite obvious.