Finding the Hidden Link Report Feature
It took me about 4 seconds just now to get a report listing all the images placed into my layout, along with their original res, effective res, scale amount, color space, and format:
Having this info at hand, in an editable format (not a screenshot) is useful when working with clients, freelancers, and print/web production people. And it’s easy to do in InDesign!
First you need to get your Links panel to show the info you want in the report. Use the Link Options dialog box (in the Links panel menu) to check off the attributes you want to see in the Columns area (top half) of the Links panel. If you’re not sure how to do that, I wrote about it back in 2009: Saving Your Links Panel Settings.
Then select all the links in the panel: click the first one, scroll to the end, and shift-click the last one. Or, if you just want a report for some of the links, Shift-click or Command/Ctrl-click on the ones you want to include.
Finally, open the Links panel menu and choose Copy Info > Copy Info for Selected Links
Switch to any document and paste it in. Voila! It comes in as editable text, each column separated by a single tab. The little thumbnails don’t come through, though. You can format it a bit to make it more readable if you like, as I did with my TextEdit document above — adjusted the tab stops and made the column headers bold.
“Copy Info for Selected Links” has been around for a while now, one of those quiet features that make life a little easier. Try it out!
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Thanks, Anne-Marie. Many times I have wanted to do this, especially when hunting down rgb images.
Nice one! Never crossed my mind to use this in the manner you described.
Awesome trick, thank you for sharing!
Excellent tip! Of course, you can also paste the clipboard into Excel; that way you have rows and columns you can sort.
Is this available in CS4?
Alicia, I’m pretty sure it is. That was the version that debuted the redesigned Links panel — the ability to show all that info in the columns (top half) of the Links panel.
Nice one Amarie!
AM,
Just got the latest issue of InDesign Magazine. This blog post in the magazine was great. Never knew about the command.
But I went a little further and discovered something that can be helpful for anyone using images as part of a data merge.
Go to the Panel Options and check “Show Path” for the Column settings.
Now place a bunch of images that you might want to use in a data merge. (I use the gridify feature to get the whole bunch on the page. It doesn’t matter how small they are.)
Now, do the same steps as you did to select those images in the Links panel and then copy the info.
You now have a tabbed delimited list of all those image with their path information!
I know it is very difficult for me to come up with the correct path information for placed images in a data merge. This makes it much easier.
Meanwhile, I love the new “Best of the Blog.” And of course I love that the magazine is now monthly!
Is there any way to edit links via a separate text file, so that I may do a find/replace on the linked drive where all photos are?
(I’m on a Mac with all links pointing to a drive letter on a Windows server; whereas the Mac lists each link with the server name, yet the previous owner of the file opened it on a PC, with all links starting with the drive letter. I now have to go through and relink all missing links, even though it’s just the first few letters of the file path, essentially.)
Plugin, perhaps?
Thanks!!