Filtered File > Open Dialog Box

This script is part of the Interface collection. See the full collection here. 

When you use File > Open (or press Ctrl+O) to open a file, InDesign shows a dialog in which, by default, all files are shown that InDesign can open. That means that INDD, INDB, IDML, PDF, and whatever else, are shown. That can make for a long and confusing list of files.

As you can see (in the bottom right of thedialog shown in the screenshot) InDesign defaults to All Readable Files. Unfortunately, you can’t change this in the dialog. If you want to see just InDesign files, you’ll have to click the dropdown and select InDesign.

However, a simple script can show the operating system’s file Open dialog and filter the displayed file list. The script shows just INDD and INDB files. The file list looks much clearer now:

You can assign the Ctrl+O shortcut to this script in the Keyboard Shortcut editor (Edit > Keyboard shortcuts) so that the script takes over InDesign’s Open… function.

Customising the filter

It’s easy to customise the filter used in the script. To do so, open the script in a text editor. The second line of the script is:

var mask = 'InDesign:*.indd;*.indb';

If you want to add e.g. IDML to the filter, change this line to

var mask = 'InDesign:*.indd;*.indb';*.idml';

You can add as many InDesign file types as you like.

The above examples create a single-item dropdown. To create a multi-line filter, separate the items with a comma. For example, this mask:

var mask = 'InDesign:*.indd;*.indb, Graphs:*.pdf;*.svg';

is shown in the dialog as follows:

After making a change in the script file, make sure to save it as a plain text file.

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