As the King sang “Please Release Me” someday you may want to release an inline graphic from its position as a character in a text frame.
Strangely there is no direct command to release an inline object. You can select an anchored object (sitting outside the text frame) and right-click or choose Object > Anchored Object > Release. The anchored object is unhinged from the text flow.
But an inline graphic is treated differently than its anchored cousins. The Release command is not available.
So how can you release an inline? One method is to simply Cut it and then Paste it. Here are two more elegant (though slightly more time-consuming) solutions:
The first is to select the object and choose Object > Anchored Object > Options and change the Position from Inline to Custom. This converts the object from inline to anchored (though the object will probably move on the page). The Release command is now available from the Anchored Object submenu.
The second is to use the cool script written by the script-genius Dave Saunders. The benefit of this script is that the inline object ends up exactly where it was before it was released. This makes it easy to then use the graphic somewhere else. (The text around it will likely reflow, though.)
You can download this script here. (Open that jsx file in a text editor to see how he did it.)
[Editor’s note: January 21: This file has been updated to a new version called ReleaseAnyAnchor, and it should work in InDesign CS3 to CS5.5 (and perhaps beyond).]
This article was last modified on December 21, 2021
This article was first published on January 19, 2012
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