Remove Imported-Style Symbols

This script is part of the Interface collection. See the full collection here. 

When you place a Word or an RTF file in InDesign, its imported styles are marked with a symbol:

The only way to get rid of that symbol is to rename the style, exit the style options window, and restore the name. That goes for all styles, not just character styles. In a document with many styles this is extremely tedious.

Unfortunately, the renaming trick doesn’t work in a script. But fortunately, a style’s import status is flagged in the IDML file, and so we can use a script to modify the IDML. The attached script does just that: it exports the document to IDML, it replaces Imported=”true” to Imported=”false” in the Styles.xml file (which is part of the IDML file), recreates the IDML file, and opens it.

Use

The script has no interface. Before you run it, make sure that the document is saved. The script creates a copy of the document and works on that. The copy’s name is the document’s name with _fixed appended. When it’s finished the script opens the IDML, so that you have the original and the fixed document open side by side.

A snag

A problem I’ve come across is that in the fixed document some character styles had the font style [Nothing], while the font style in the original was Regular. It looks as if this happens when a character style doesn’t have a font family applied. It’s a problem in the IDML export, because the exported IDML contains the [Nothing] font style. The script therefore changes all instances of FontStyle=”Nothing” to FontStyle=”Regular”. If you want to use another font style, open the script in a plain-text editor and look for the line (it’s line 51):

s = s.replace ('FontStyle="Nothing"','FontStyle="Regular"','g');

and change Regular to the style name you want to use. Alternatively, disable the line by entering two forward slashes at its start.

Version history

4 Dec. 2025: Posted.

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