As I’ve said many times before, I’m a huge fan of InDesign’s Quick Apply feature. I think it’s such genius that I wish it existed in all the Adobe applications. To open the Quick Apply panel, you just type its shortcut (Command+Return/Ctrl+Enter) and then start typing the name of the command/style/script you want, and once that thing appears selected in the panel, press Enter or Return to apply it. There’s no mousing around and the whole process takes about 1.5 seconds. It’s wonderful for styling a bunch of manuscript, or applying an obscure command that’s buried in some panel menu.
But every once in a while Quick Apply fails to display the command I want. I end up typing the entire name of the command but it never appears. At that point, I begin to wonder, if A) I just dreamt that such a feature existed, or B) who broke my InDesign. Of course, I soon realize that I’m dealing with a PEBCAK error (sometimes also known as a PICNIC error).*
See the thing is, Quick Apply is smarter than me. It only displays commands that are currently available. Menu items that are grayed out don’t appear in the Quick Apply list. So, for example, I can’t invoke the Pathfinder Subtract command, unless I have more than object selected.
Or I can’t distribute table rows evenly when I only have one of them selected.
It’s a simple thing, and maybe rather obvious. But we’re all human, and sometimes the obvious solution appears right in front of our eyes…until it doesn’t ;)
One more thing: as Theunis De Jong pointed out in the comments, Scripts are not enabled in Quick Apply by default. They won’t appear until you select them in the panel menu (click on the triangle at the top of the panel). You can also de-clutter the list and get even faster results by turning off the things you don’t need. So if you only ever want to use Quick Apply to style text, turn off menu commands, etc.
*PEBCAK = Problem Exists Between Chair and Keyboard, PICNIC = Problem In Chair, Not In Computer
This article was last modified on May 6, 2020
This article was first published on July 8, 2019
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