Gather Links Without Packaging

Recently, a designer on an InDesign listserv said she missed PageMaker’s “Save As/with Links for Printing” feature, which she had found useful to get all of her original image files into a “clean, new folder” along with her saved-as PageMaker file.

Though InDesign lacks that specific feature, you can easily achieve the same end result with one of my favorite commands: Copy Links To. It’s fast, easy, and helps keep things organized as you work. I use it all the time.

1. Choose Save As to create a new version of your InDesign layout, and in the Save As dialog box, create that “clean new folder” to save it into. This is optional, of course – Copy Links To doesn’t require it – but we’re replicating the Pagemaker feature here.
2. Your Saved As file is the current, active document. Open its Links palette and select all the entries: Click to select the top link, scroll to the bottom of the palette and shift-click the last entry.
3. Choose the Copy Links To command in the Links palette menu. InDesign will copy the selected links; the original images, PDFs, etc. that you placed, and duplicate them to the folder you specify in the next step.
4. An Open/Save dialog box opens, asking you to select a folder where you’d like the links copied to. To do that Pagemaker thing, navigate to the location of your current InDesign document, add a new subfolder (perhaps called “Links”), select it and click the Choose button.

When the dialog box closes it doesn’t look like anything has changed. The entries in the Links palette look exactly the same as before. But try double-clicking an entry to view its Link Info, specfically, the path to the original file.

As you can see, InDesign has automatically updated the links in the current document to their new location, just like the Update Links checkbox does in the File > Package command. So it acts like a “mini-Package” without the tedious routine of a forced preflight and instruction form.

But it’s not a complete replacement for Packaging, as you don’t have an option to copy the fonts, for one thing.

On the other hand, if you’re prone to forgetting that the Package command puts a copy of the current InDesign document into the Package folder, leaving the current layout open (into which you might be entering last-minute changes); you should consider using Copy Links To for an “almost ready for the printer” intermediate step.

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