Received an email from a Perth InDesign User Group member today who’s moved from InDesign CS6 to Creative Cloud Membership:
Do you know if there is an easy way to move or copy saved GREP queries from the Find/Change area of InDesign?
OK, I’m not sure the following classifies as an ‘easy way’ but there is ‘a way’… I’ve done a quick test and can say that you can copy saved Find/Change Queries from InDesign Version 8.0 (CS6) to Version 9.0 (CC). They should work as they did in CS6. However, let us know if there are issues in doing this, and we’ll update this post to include that additional information.
[insert July 3, 2013] You can use this trick to also move/copy Workspaces, Menu Sets and Shortcuts across to InDesign CC. (thank you Rolando for adding that to the comments section).
Copying Find/Change Queries to InDesign CC
Before you follow these instructions: Keep in mind that the instructions below copy ALL of the saved Find/Change queries.
If you are only interested in copying certain saved queries, or want to add saved queries to saved queries you’ve build in InDesign CC, you’d need to open up the sub-folders and only copy those queries you’d like to move across.
Step 1 – Quit InDesign
- Quit out of InDesign.
Step 2 – for Mac Users
On the Mac you’ll need to navigate to: Users/[yourname]/Library/Preferences/Adobe InDesign/Version 8.0/en_US
If you are running OSX 10.7 or higher you’ll need to use a little trick to get into the Library folder as it is hidden by default: In the Finder, press the Option-key on your keyboard and choose Library from the Go menu.
Step 2 – for Windows users
On the PC you’ll need to navigate to:
C:\Users\[yourname]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\InDesign\Version 8.0n_US
If you don’t see the AppData folder, you’ll first need to ensure you can see the hidden files on your system:
- Open the Control Panel.
- Click Appearance and Personalization
- Click Show hidden files and folders under the Folder Options heading.
- Select Show hidden files, folders, and drives in the Folder Options dialog.
On Windows 7 you access the Control Panel from the Start menu in lower left.
On Windows 8, display the Charm bar, by clicking in the lower right of the screen. Click Search, and type Control Panel.
Step 3 – Copying
Note: If you are running another language version of InDesign you’d navigate to the appropriate language folder. For example if you’ve installed the International English version of InDesign you’d navigate to the en_GB folder.
- Select the folder ‘Find-Change Queries’ in the language folder in Version 8.0.
- Press Cmd+C to copy it.
- Navigate to and Open the Version 9.0/en_US folder
- Press Cmd+V to paste the Find-Change Queries folder.
The Find/Change queries should now be available in InDesign CC when you launch it.
Happy Find/Changing :)
This article was last modified on December 30, 2021
This article was first published on June 29, 2013
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