Updating Multiple Linked Images at Once

Wayne wrote:

Where can I get more information on updating links quickly?

When people want to update links quickly, they’re usually talking about one of two scenarios: Either they have the same image placed multiple times in a document, or they have a bunch of different images that have been modified. Here are two solutions (taken from our book Adobe InDesign CS/CS2 Breakthroughs).

Let’s say you have more than one instance of an image, and then the image gets modified. If you select one instance in the Links palette and click Update, InDesign only updates that one instance. Why? It’s a feature-not-a-bug, because you may want to inspect each of those instances to see if you really do want to update the artwork. Seems kind of lame, though; InDesign should at least give you the option with a dialog box or preference setting or something.

Meanwhile, here’s what you do: Open the Links palette menu and change the sort to “Sort by Name” so all the instances of the image appear together. Click on the first one in the palette and Shift-click on the last one so they’re all selected. Now when you choose Update Link, all the entries will be updated at once.

Or, if you have a lot of modified images to update, make sure no images are selected in the Links palette by clicking in the blank area at the bottom of the list of links. Now when you click the Update button, InDesign updates them all. (Selecting none is sort of like selecting all of them.)

Branislav Milic wrote a nice piece in InDesign Magazine about using the INX format to replace one image that is used a hundred times in a single document with a different image. It’s not for the faint-hearted, but it’s pretty powerful.