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• • November 17, 2016 at 9:44 am #89863
    Laura Sutherland

    Participant

    Is there a way to find/change only on the Master Pages? We publish medical journals and we need to change the year in the header, but there are items on the text pages (e.g., online publication date, references) that also have the year (in the same font). If I could limit the search to the master pages, it would be a much faster process. Thanks!

  • November 17, 2016 at 4:50 pm #89876
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    No… but you can do it easily if you have used Layers.

    There IS an “include master pages” button in the scope section of Find/Change. So turn that on to find stuff on the master pages.

    So put all these master page footers/headers on a layer (where they should be anyway). Then when you do the find/change, Hide all the layers except for that header/footer layer. By default, InDesign won’t find text on a hidden layer.

  • November 18, 2016 at 8:06 am #89889
    Laura Sutherland

    Participant

    Thanks. I’m working on new templates (based on all the good stuff I learned at the conference in DC!), and layers will be a part of them. But I don’t think layers will help with this specific issue, unless I can turn them off at the book level? We publish individual articles (online ahead of print) on a weekly basis; each of those articles is it’s own separate InDesign file. Then articles from various weeks are bundled together in a book for the print issues, and that’s where the running head comes in — we have it as a nonprinting item on our master pages until we make the print issues. The header text is J Neurosurg Spine ##:A–1, 2016, with the ## being a placeholder for the volume number, the A being the first page number of the article, and the 1 being the last page (text variables). We’ve tried doing a find/replace on that whole header with the idea being that I can just change the ## and the 2016 and leave everything else the same. But, when I copy and paste that line into the Find and Change to fields, it becomes J Neurosurg Spine ##:\x{0018}–\x{0018}, 2016, and the result is that my page range goes from being first to last to being first to first (i.e., if I apply a change, it becomes J Neurosurg Spine ##:A–A, 2016). And I don’t see a way to reinsert the last page number into the search field. If there were a way to maintain the variable page numbers during the search, that would be an easy fix. But I think I’d have to hide layers in each individual article in order to search layers only? (Depending on the journal, there can be 20-40 articles in a book.) Thanks again for your help.

  • November 18, 2016 at 9:01 am #89892
    Peter Kahrel

    Participant

    > We’ve tried doing a find/replace on that whole header with the idea being that I can just change the ## and the 2016 and leave everything else the same

    Do two GREP replacements:

    Find what: (?<=##:\x{0018}~=\x{0018}, )2016
    Change to: 2017 (or whichever year)
    
    Find what: ##(?=:\x{0018})
    Change to: whatever you want in place of ##

    By specifying the page variables (\x{0018}) in a lookbehind (the first replacemend) and a lookahead (the second one) you use them to find text, but the variables are not involved in the change.

    Peter

  • November 18, 2016 at 9:28 am #89897
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    Peter is always an awesome help!

    Another thing to think about, regarding books in a book file is that you can make a change on one of the master pages, set that as a the “master” document in the book, and then sync that master page.
    https://creativepro.com/synchronize-multiple-indesign-documents.php

  • November 18, 2016 at 10:30 am #89899
    Laura Sutherland

    Participant

    You guys are both awesome help! I haven’t gotten the GREP to work yet, but I think I see the direction I need to go in. And I’m going to set up our new master pages with the one book master in mind! Thank you!

  • June 6, 2018 at 4:19 pm #104229
    Jon Fraze

    Member

    I’d give the running head a unique style sheet. That way you can search for the character string you want and use the Find Format field to specify that you only want to apply the Find/Replace to anything that matches your character string and matches the style sheet you want. No messing with layers.

    The first time you do it in any document you’d have to search for the character string of your entire running head, and tell it to change it to your unique Running Head style sheet. It should find every instance in your document and change it. After that, just do a Find/Replace for each specific string that matches your style sheet… eg, replace ## that matches “Running Head” style with your volume number, and so on.

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