Finding Empty Text Frames in InDesign

RC wrote:

How can I find an empty text frame in InDesign?

I’m not sure if you’re asking how to find them, or how to delete them… but here are two answers:

Find

First, you can find an empty text frame using the Find/Change dialog box. First, click the GREP tab, and then type \A\Z in the Find What field. That code (backslash-A-backslash-Z) will search for a frame that contains a story with no text. (In the case of multiple frames threaded together, but with no story, it will find only the first frame in the thread.)

In this case, it places the text cursor inside the frame. If you want to delete it, you’d have to press Esc (to select the frame) and then the Delete key.

Script

Another option is to use a script. For example, Harbs at In-Tools.com wrote a short script called DeleteEmptyFrame.jsx that will delete all empty frames in a document.

(If you need help installing scripts, see this post.)

Of course, a text frame with a single blank space it in is no longer “empty,” so the script won’t find it. Another thing the script won’t find is a frame that has xml tags in it but no text. I assume that’s because the xml tags are probably some kind of invisible or hidden text in the frame. I saw an AppleScript here that looks for frames that have zero words in them, that apparently works. [editor: that link appears to be broken now]

Plug-in

The Blatner Tools plug-in from DTP Tools (yes, I did have something to do with this one) includes a plug-in called Quality Assurance (or QA) which can find empty frames, as well as lots of other possible problem areas of documents.

I hope that helps!

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