Learn to Automate InDesign by Scripting

Keith Gilbert

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Scripts can keep the magic alive in your ongoing relationship with your work.

This article appeared in Issue 82 of InDesign Magazine.

When you first learn InDesign, almost everything you do is new and exciting. The simple act of freely positioning text and images on a page, without constraint, is thrilling. But when the novelty wears off and you’ve attained a certain level of proficiency with InDesign, you may become frustrated by the many repetitive, mundane tasks involved in page layout and production. Learning “secrets,” keyboard shortcuts, and advanced techniques can help make some of these tasks easier. But true efficiency and automation comes through learning to script InDesign. A script might mean the difference between spending minutes vs. hours on a project.

Every InDesign user should at minimum know how to find, install, and use scripts. So, at the very least, read that portion of this article. Then, once you’ve found how useful scripts can be, my hope is that you’ll want to continue on and learn to edit and create scripts specific for your work.
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