In InDesignSecrets Podcast 178, David and Anne-Marie discuss some of the reader-nominated “Ridiculous Features in InDesign”. One of the items discussed was how superflous the “instructions.txt” file is. The purpose of this text file is that it contains a summary of the links in your file, the fonts used, etc. In theory, this is a way to communicate with your output service provider. But in reality, it is often unnecessary.
I find myself constantly deleting this file whenever I find it on my hard drive, or immediately after I package a file. So I decided to whip up a little script that would package files without creating the instructions.txt file. You can download the free script here. Be sure to read the “read_me.pdf” that accompanies the script. The script works on Mac or Windows InDesign CS4-CS6.
One additional benefit of the script (or drawback, depending on your needs) is that the script doesn’t stop for any preflight errors. It just quietly packages without any interruption. So you’ll need to check to make sure you don’t have any missing fonts or links before you run the script.
This article was last modified on December 21, 2021
This article was first published on August 24, 2012
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