100 Free InDesign Scripts
Free for the taking: a heaping helping of features that make InDesign better, faster, and more fun
When was the last time a new feature was added to InDesign that got you really excited? If you’re like me, it’s been quite a while. But what if I told you there were literally hundreds of cool and useful features you could add to InDesign right now, for free? And you can add just the ones that are useful to you, with no worries about “bloating” the application. Sound good? Well, that is exactly what you can do with scripts. And as part of our 100th issue celebration, I thought it would be fun to gather up 100 awesome free scripts to share with you.
Now I know some of you are thinking we already did this recently, with Erica Gamet’s Script-o-pedia article in issue 88. Ah, but this is a completely different set of scripts! Not a single one of these scripts appeared in that article. That’s not to say these are all new scripts. Some of them are what I’d call “classics.” These are scripts that have been around for a while, but still work and are no less valuable than the day they appeared. Others are fairly new to the scene. They’re (almost) all cross-platform; 99 of them work on both Mac and Windows. And none of them will cost you a cent to use. But please consider making a donation to the person wrote any script that you find useful. Now, without further ado, on with the scripts!
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Title says “Free Scripts”. Body says “must pay for subscription”.
Clickbait is bad. Will not subscribe because of underhanded tactics.
Please rethink deceptive headlines and manipulative methods.
It’s neither underhanded nor clickbait. The scripts are all 100% free and the article is marked as premium content.
What he means is for not-yet-subscribers it feels like Clickbait. I happen to agree. Perhaps better to lead with “PREMIUM SUBSCRIBERS: 100 Free InDesign Scripts!”
And use same for future such enticements.
Otherwise keep it up, you guys are terrific!
I just came to the site for the first time. I clicked on 3 or 4 articles and ALL of them were premium, which was rather irritating and made me think I shouldn’t bother with this site anymore.
I see the response from the co-publisher below. Before reading that I wasn’t aware there were any actual free articles or that article icons were marked to indicate which are premium content.
Thanks for the feedback, James. Just as a point of reference, there are over 2700 articles here, and currently 120 are premium. So over 95% of the content is free.
The first script in this list I went to look for turns out to require a payment of US$29 upwards to run beyond a trial period. So the notion that “the scripts are all 100% free” looks like an ‘alternative fact’ to me.
We don’t deal in such things here, Chris. Which script are you talking about?
Ok, my bad on the Color2Gray script. I missed the fact that it was a trial version. To compensate, I’ve added another script in the Images section that is 100% functional and free: Place Inline Images. Thanks for letting me know, Chris.
As a reader and InDesign user, I will say this magazine holds real value for designers. You hurt yourself by not subscribing. The major contributors are generous with their time, experience and expertise. I’ve used this software for 10 years and yet, earlier this year I got stuck on an unfamiliar aspect. As a subscriber, I immediately accessed the forums, asked my question, and had a wise answer from a co-founder within a few hours.
Color2Gray, Mike.
Interesting feedback, thank you! As the co-publisher of this site I just feel compelled to weigh in here. I’m a long-time reader of dozens of other blogs, some of which I subscribe to but most that I don’t, and I’m keenly aware of maintaining trust with our readers while finding cost-effective ways to maintain and grow the subscriptions that support all our efforts.
Out of the 20–25 InDesignSecrets blog posts that go up every month, most are free to read in their entirety by anyone, but 5 or 6 of them are premium-access only: HTML versions of articles from InDesign Magazine (like this one) and our InDesign template/swipe file of the month.
When we started converting some of the magazine articles to HTML (as a convenience to our PDF subscribers) we initially included a phrase like “premium subscribers” in the title, like you suggest. But we soon realized it worked against us in a number of ways: Overly-long titles, lower SEO, and yes, giving a big heads-up to non-subscribers to skip over them. We’re not trying to get folks to page through 15 screens so you see dozens of ads on each page. We just want to make sure you know that premium subscribers are getting a ton of great InDesign content that we work very hard on producing, that you may not realize because you’re not getting that sweet PDF in your Inbox every month.
We are still posting a lot of free InDesign tips and tricks as always, as I said. To reduce the annoyance factor, we put a large blue and white “P” (for Premium) on the story’s thumbnail icon on the home page, and the story page carries a “Premium Content” tag above its title, and the fact that it’s fully readable only to logged-in premium members is explained in the first paragraph.
Thanks again for your feedback and understanding. We will try to include a bit more content from our magazine articles in the free portion of the posts. And, feel free to contact me directly at [email protected] if you want to carry on the discussion.
I can’t resist saying, the full list of 100 free InDesign scripts is AWESOME. It was great in the PDF magazine (kudos to Mike for pulling these together!) and even more convenient here as a post.
Dear Mike,
I have developed a possible #101: the “margins calculator” (free) script for InDesign. This script allows you to get the top, outer, bottom and inner margins for the five most common canons of page construction. The five canons are the “fine” print, the “regular” print and 3 based of a geometrical division on the page: by 6, 9 and 12.
It is available on http://www.thebookcalculator.com
Best regards,
Laurent
Greetings,
We just posted a new freebie for InDesign CC 2017 today. It’s called the Meadows Productivity Suite, and the first version provides a cool option for handling multi-up impositions. Feel free to check it out at http://www.meadowsps.com/mps-pro-suite-details
Thanks,
JK
BTW, yes it is FREE!
We are looking for a script that will unlock all items within an InDesign document at one time over multiple pages. I cannot see the list of available scripts. Can someone tell me if it is included or if not where I might find such a script?
What do you want to lock? The items or the layers?
(^/)
I am a premium subscriber, logged in to https // creativepro.com. While reading, I come to the following message:
“This article from InDesign Magazine is for premium subscribers only. To continue reading, please log in above, or sign up for a premium membership today! Thanks for supporting CreativePro!”
How do I get me to read this article?
Hi Wlodek- If your membership is current, you should be able to read all premium articles on the website. I suggest you try logging in using a different browser. If that fails, please contact our customer support team and they’ll figure out what the issue is.
I subscribed, and I still can’t get to the information on this page. Issue 88 is page not found and the 100th issue takes me to a document that is locked after the first coiuple of pages. Where is this stuff? Why do I need to pay more to remove the padlock on most of the pages?
Hi Jeff- Sorry for the trouble! As a member you get access to all the magazine content, with no exceptions. I’m seeing the same problem here, so we’ll get that fixed as soon as possible. In the meantime, you should be able to download the PDF of any issue. Here’s a link to issue 88: https://creativepro.com/issue-88-the-indesign-script-o-pedia/ If you encounter any other problems, please use the Contact form and someone will help you: https://creativepro.com/contact/ And thank you for subscribing!