GREP utilities

All scripts mentioned here are for CS3 and later unless stated otherwise.

Change case interactively

Using InDesign's Find/Change dialog, you can't change the case of what your GREP matches. Thus, you can't change acronyms in upper case to lower case and apply some style to them. The script, which is in effect an extension of the Find/Change dialog, makes this possible.

Show the scope of InDesign's GREP wildcards

InDesign CS4 added 37 Unicode GREP wildcards (\p{P*}, \p{Lt}, etc.), which brings the total number of wildcards to more than 50. How do you know which characters are matched by which wildcard? The "grep mapper" shows you.

GREP class inserter

By clicking the @ icon on the GREP tab of the Find/Change window, you open a flyout menu which you can use to insert various GREP classes and other GREP items in the Find what field. That menu was incomplete when GREP was first introduced (in CS3), and has never been updated when new features were added. The script creates a floating panel that shows all GREP features that InDesign's community is aware of.

A (simple) GREP editor

InDesign's Find what field must be one of the smallest and unfriendliest places to write and edit GREP expressions in. Here is an alternative: more spacious, find highlighting, and a GREP special character inserter that includes all the special characters Adobe doesn't tell you about.

GREP preview

The GREP editor, above, highlights all matches in a text. If you're dealing with a long text, however, it may be more useful to get a list of matches in a separate document. The GREP previewer does that. Optionally, you get a preview of the change results too.

A GREP query manager

The script displays an overview of all your GREP queries and their contents. Queries can be chained and these chains can be saved. Expressions can be edited; the Find What part can be copied to GREP styles. The results of queries can be collected and displayed in a new document, optionally with page numbers.

(An older version of this script can be found here; it's simpler but localised in four languages.)

GREP style report

Print a report of all GREP styles defined in a document's paragraph styles (CS4 and later). The GREP expressions are printed using syntax highlighting to make them more readable.

GREP query runner

This is a much simpler version of the Query manager. It displays a list of all your queries and executes the selected ones.

List GREP queries

The script prints an overview of all GREP queries on your system in an InDesign document, using syntax highlighting to make expressions more readable.


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