Using Old Scripts in CS3
December 31st, 2007It seems like each day there is a new script coming out to do something cool in InDesign. But what about all the old scripts — those that were written for CS or CS2? Can you use them in InDesign CS3? If you’re a CS3 user with old scripts, you may find that they fail, offering nothing but a cryptic error message. But there’s hope: InDesign has a special “cs2 emulation mode” that allows you to use many older scripts.
The trick is to make a new folder inside this folder:
Mac: Applications/Adobe InDesign/Scripts/Scripts Panel/
or
Users/[username]/Library/Preferences/Adobe InDesign/Version 5.0/Scripts/
Windows: Program Files/Adobe/Adobe InDesign/Scripts/Scripts Panel/
or in XP:
Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Adobe\InDesign\Version 5.0\Scripts\
or in Vista:
Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\InDesign\Version 5.0\Scripts\
The new folder should be called Version 4.0 Scripts
You can then put your older scripts inside that folder. They’ll show up in the Scripts panel (inside a similarly-named Version 4.0 Scripts folder), and you can run them by double-clicking on the script name (as usual).
My understanding is that this won’t work for all older scripts, but it does work for many of them, saving you the hassle of rustling up (or writing) a new version.
Bonus Script Troubleshooting Tip
By the way, I’ve gotten a couple of emails from people who simply can’t get their scripts to run on their Mac. They even did clean installations and the scripts still don’t work. I was flummoxed, but Ryan Russell—dedicated InDesignSecrets fan—came up with a solution that worked for him. He noticed (with the help of Adobe’s tech support) that some of his folder names on his hard drive were slightly wrong.
Specifically, the folders in this path:
User>Library>Preferences>Adobe InDesign>Version 5.0
weren’t named the same as in this path:
User>Library>Cache>Adobe InDesign>Version 5.0
Apparently, that’s all it takes for InDesign to break. He renamed the folders and all his scripts suddenly started working again. I don’t know if that will help anyone else, but it’s worth looking into.
It’s also possible to run an CS2 version script in CS3 by adding the following code to the start of the script. Useful for when your running the script from a different location.
#target “InDesign-5.0″
app.scriptPreferences.version = 4.0;
Thanks for this tip. I’ve been holding off upgrading to 10.5 because my clients are still on CS2 and 10.4. It’s good to know of any potential snags before I upgrade to Leopard/CS3.
I have a question about plug-ins, specifically LILO.APLN and CELLSTYLES.RPLN. These two plug-ins are missing on my CS3 indd, so I can’t open the file. The message says to update them. Can you help? Thanks.—Chatelaine
One small correction on the Windows side of things. To get the scripts to run on Windows XP you need to add “Scripts Panel” to the above given address. So the full location is: Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Adobe\InDesign\Version 5.0\Scripts\Scripts Panel
At least that’s what my machine required. After I did that, the scripts showed up in InDesign no problem.