Save All Open Documents
January 4th, 2008MY wrote:
I am working on a project that has 15 documents in a book. After I do a global change, I have to activate each document window and save it. Is there a way to tell indesign to save all opened documents? Shouldn’t it be a option in the book’s panel to do this?
I completely agree that this should be a function of the Book panel, but you won’t find it there. Fortunately, InDesign does have this feature… it’s just hidden as a keyboard shortcut. By default the shortcut is Command-Option-Shift-S / Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S, though you can of course, change that to whatever you want.
If you are looking to change it, it’s easy to find with the Keyboard Shortcuts panel (just search for “Save All”), but in the Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts dialog box, you need to look in what I think is an illogical place: the Views & Navigation Product Area.
By the way, you probably noticed that the Book panel does have a “Save Book” feature, but it doesn’t save the individual documents in the book — just the book file itself (the tiny file on disk that remembers the documents, their order, and other book-related information).
You could always just quit the application (Cmd Q) and then you will be prompted to save every document that is open.
Fritz, that’s an interesting point. Another idea might be to take a hammer to the computer until all that is left is the hard drive. Reinstall the hard drive in a new machine, then boot up InDesign and use the Autorecovery feature to re-open all the files, then export them to INX, email them to a friend, and have them save them for you.
If anyone tries this, please don’t hold us responsible. But please do take video of your process and send it to us.
Dude, harsh. I occasionally use Fritz’s method in Photoshop, when the job is big enough to not want to hit command-s, command-w, but small enough that I don’t want to go through the trouble of finding a save-all script (which I never seem to have on hand, for some reason). I just quit the app and float over the Return key.
why not take screenshots of each page and paste them into word. Then save them out as a jpg. Next Place the jpgs in quark and save each page as an eps. You can always place the eps files back into ID at your leisure:)
When all documents are open you can force crash indesign, when you reopen InDesign it will re-open all the files, with the data saved… I’ll get my coat.
Brian, I was just teasing Fritz a little (Sorry Fritz! But I love your screen shot idea.)
I can see the value in the quit method when there is no built-in feature. But the point of my post is that InDesign does have a built-in method (but only with a keyboard shortcut).
David, it’s very odd that it isn’t in the file menu. Perhaps in the next Update for InDesign they can include that in the menu list. I’ve already submitted this to Adobe on their Wishlist page
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform
I will definitely use this now, as I run into sort of the same deal. I used to just tab through my documents using Command ~ then Command-S to scroll through and save all my open docs.
Note, that InDesign has also “CloseAll” feature, that closes all open files. This feature is also hidden under shortcut (Command-Option-Shift-W / Ctrl+Alt+Shift+W), and I use both of them (SaveAll & CloseAll) a lot, while I work simultanously on dozen-or-so of files.
This is great tip that will save me couple of minutes at least once a month when I open and change month number in a book with over 40 documents.
Untill today I used what Fritz suggested and now I found another half of David’s tip - CLOSE ALL, so I and Fritz can completely forget the old Ctrl-Q way.
Similar question… Is there any way to PRINT all open images?
I want to do this when I’m making Contact Sheets using PS Automation. Sometimes it’ll create 8-10 contact sheets, which I don’t even need to save at all. Just print and Command W. Except I’m tired of doing that.
I think I’ll try this with P instead of S.
Ugh… Edit > Print all open DOCUMENTS. This is an InDesign site after all.
(I’m just hoping the keystrokes will be the same in PS.)
Bah. It doesn’t work, of course, because Command-Alt-Shift-P is package. Never mind me.
*slinks away*