Klaus (yes, that Klaus, a frequent commenter here) wrote us:
How can I clear all Overrides globally, throughout a whole document, for all ParaStyles — and not just on an individual spread basis?
You can do this, albeit somewhat tediously, by taking advantage of what most people consider to be a bug in InDesign:
- With the layout active, open the Find/Change dialog box from the Edit menu. If you’re using CS3 make sure that you’re in the Text section, the first one.
- Leave the Find What and Change To fields empty, but underneath them in the Search: dropdwon menu, set the scope of your find/change to Document.
- Open the Find Format and Change Format area by clicking the More Options button.
- Set both Find Format and Change Format to the same Paragraph style. After clicking the OK button in these dialog boxes, your Find/Change Format area should look like this:
- Now click the Change All button. Clicking the Find button won’t invoke the “bug” — it has to be the Change All button.
Voila, any local text formatting is stripped out of paragraphs using the style you selected, throughout the entire document. Character styles remain intact.
(This is the bug; that local formatting is stripped out. If you ever need to do a Find/Change that includes the same paragraph style in both Format areas but you don’t want to lose local formatting, use only the Find, Change or Change/Find buttons. Stay away from Change All.)
The Find/Change dialog box is still open, so just click the Find Format edit button to switch to the next paragraph style on your list, do the same to Change Format, and click the Change All button. Done. Continue with the other styles as necessary.
Klaus reported back that “It worked, splendidly!”
By the way, well-known InDesign scripter Dave Saunders wrote a free Javascript a few years ago that does the same thing to all the paragraph styles at once, called ReassertParaStyles.js. I tested it with CS3 — changed the extension to .jsx and put it in my Version 4.0 Scripts folder just in case — and it still works.
Go to the Downloads page on Dave’s site, PDS Associates, and look for the link to ReassertParaStyles.js. There are a few other good ones there, too. Don’t forget to send a little monetary encouragement his way if this or any of his other free and useful scripts have helped you out!
This article was last modified on December 18, 2021
This article was first published on March 23, 2008
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