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• • September 7, 2022 at 1:56 pm #14371539
    Gopa Campbell

    Participant

    Is there any way to search using find/change or using a grep when you want to find a non-specific indent. As an example, I have a huge book I’m working on. The style sheet for a paragraph of indented text includes an 11-pt first line indent. But often, the Word document I receive from the editor has indents that are all over the place. They have used 6 different styles (Normal, Normal 1, Normal 2, etc) for what should be the same thing and then they have also overridden those many stylesheets in all sorts of spurious ways. Sometimes the indent has become 18.56 pts, sometimes 23, sometimes who knows what. My experience is that most editors don’t know how to use Word correctly and trying to teach them is impossible, so I generally have to clean up their mess. I do customize the import in the Indesign “Place” dialog box, but it brings in all the overrides with it. So what I would like to do is: “Search for Style X where indent is not 11-pt.” Can that be done?

  • September 7, 2022 at 2:00 pm #14371540
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    No, find/change can’t find non-specific amounts like that, unfortunately. (Though a script could be written.)
    I agree with you about Word users! :-)
    But in most cases, the best option is to simply strip out most of the overrides. See this post:

    Import Word Files into InDesign, Remove Local Formatting but Keep Italics and Bold

  • September 7, 2022 at 2:07 pm #14371541
    Gopa Campbell

    Participant

    Thanks for this and for your super-speedy answer. I already do that whole thing before I import, but those indents have had me stymied! (I’ve actually even made some more steps to account for the special mess my editor makes when inserting complicated diacritics into Word. I can tell you if you are interested!

  • September 8, 2022 at 1:59 am #14371566
    Michel Allio for FRIdNGE

    Participant

    As I often say, It’s simple to play this kind of game! ;-)

    1/ Search the para style X with the right Indent and apply a condition.

    2/ Search the para style X without condition and apply the right indent … applying the para style X!

    (^/) The Jedi

    • September 8, 2022 at 8:55 am #14371587
      David Blatner

      Keymaster

      Michel, you are always good at finding new ways to think about a problem. I appreciate that. However, I do not understand “Search the para style X without condition”. I am sure this is easy in a script, but it is possible in the Find/Change dialog box, without a script?

    • September 8, 2022 at 9:56 am #14371590
      Michel Allio for FRIdNGE

      Participant

      David

      The question is: ““Search for Style X where indent is not 11-pt.””

      Regex 1:

      Find: a para style “X” with the indent “11 pt”
      Replace by: a “condition”, called “11 pt” to all the right paras found.

      Regex 2:

      Find: the para style “X” with “no condition” ==> that will find all the paras with bad indent.
      Replace by: the indent “11 pt” + para style “X”

      But why not place the cursor in a right para with the para style “X” and re-initialize it to override all the bad ones in the same time!? No really need Grep

      … Or maybe I’ve not clearly understood the question! ;-)

      (^/)

    • September 8, 2022 at 3:30 pm #14371593
      David Blatner

      Keymaster

      Oh my gosh, that is so simple, yet so hard to get into my head. Yes, I have just tried it and it works great.
      For example:

      1. Find Text: blank, and Find Format: bodyText style, First Left Indent 11 pt
      2. Change Text: blank, and Change Format: turn on some feature that has an on and off but will not cause significant change to the document, such as Ignore Optical Margin
      3. Find All
      4. Clear Formatting from find/change
      5. Find Text: blank, and Find Format: bodyText style, Ignore Optical Margin = OFF
      6. Change Text: blank, and Change Format: turn off Ignore Optical Margin, and set Left Indent to 11 pt
      7. Change All

      The result: the bodyText style paragraphs will all have 11 pt first line indent.

    • September 8, 2022 at 9:38 am #14371588
      Gopa Campbell

      Participant

      Or, could you write that script for me?

    • September 8, 2022 at 4:41 pm #14371598
      Gopa Campbell

      Participant

      Ha! I had figured this out slightly differently, or perhaps the same with different details. I did find text style with first line indent 11 pt and change those paragraphs to another color — in this case a custom blue. Then find the text style colored black and change it to first line indent 11 pt. Then delete the blue color from my color list. Voilà. I thought maybe there was a more clever way to do it, but perhaps I am more clever than I think!

  • September 28, 2022 at 10:39 pm #14372743
    Jillian Hernandez

    Member

    Good work

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