I suspect the reason your printer is asking for spots to remain as spots (even on a Digital Press) is because Fiery RIP software has an ability to change how a specific colour channel looks without effecting the appearance of the rest of the document.

For example – a brochure that is largely full colour and all the colour looks fine, but contains a PANTONE 295 logo that – when comparing to the swatches – looks too purple, can easily be adjusted by going into the spot colour settings of the Fiery RIP and adjusting the target colour values for the 295 in particular. If the 295 is forced/set up to process in the artwork, that level of control is lost by the printer.

We see this a lot at my work where clients have a particular colour associated with their brands and this is one way of controlling the appearance of the colours. With colours like Orange 021, no digital printer using CMYK only will ever get close, but the Fiery control can beat the forced-to-process colour generated by InDesign. We also see this when clients have supplied purely CMYK art and delivered a proof, only for the proof to be rejected because a brand doesn’t meet their colour specifications or previously printed offset sample that we weren’t aware of.

What I can say about digital colour is that print providers (like me) have to calibrate the printers daily (if not twice or thrice daily) to maintain colour consistency as parts of the machine can change through constant use. So even away from InDesign and Photoshop, maintaining consistent colour on a digital press is not as easy as one would think.

One thing I will say based on reading the thread is stop relying on the screen to expect what you want on print in terms of spot colours. The screen won’t be able to display pantone swatches accurately as it is likely that they will be out of the gamut of the monitor, just as some CMYK colours will be. Pantone swatches are one thing, but pantone inks were originally intended for offset presses printing in ink that is absorbed through paper, not heated toner that sits on the top of the paper and thus isn’t absorbed into the paper.

Colour calibration issues discussed on IDS often relate to “should I use RGB/CMYK” and the debate is polarising… but this largely relates to the appearance of full colour artwork and not spot colour artwork.

I agree with Jongware – the MultiPageImporter script (there is a link on the indesignsecrets.com website somewhere – use the search feature on the main page) is a go-to script at my work and is used at least once a day… the only time it has errors or issues is if the PDF being placed was actually made of many PDFs (e.g. several PDFs combined using adobe acrobat into one large PDF), or importing a PDF that was created outside of adobe software (e.g. a word file that was “printed” to PDF can occasionally have issues to do with the page boxes used)

Try the script mentioned by Uwe Laubender in this Adobe Forum: https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1014766 (11th comment in).

The script is written by Hans Haesler and is in German, but I believe it will do what you want.

Colin

My trick works… just a case of getting the script to play ball.

So far, I have a found a script by Shirley Hopkins (www.yourscriptdoctor.com) that, when run, places an anchored object based on presets in the script. Her script has type in the anchored object, but I have changed it to a plain ol’ rectangle… but because my scripting skills are very basic trial-and-error stuff that makes most scripters facepalm, I’m having real difficulty pasting the grouped objects (that have their unique object styles) into the rectangle via the script. I’m sure the scripters out there could tackle it, no worries.

Doing it step by step (i.e. running the modded script that generates the no fill/stroke anchored object in the right spot, and then clicking on it and going “paste into”, and filling frame to fit content) it works, and the object styles can be manipulated individually via the object styles menu and the object styles change independently, so the proof of principle is there.

So it is possible, but not with my skillset unfortunately!

Colin

Make a new object style that has all of the little checkboxes with a “-” in them in both the “basic attributes” and “effects for” parts of the window, with the exception of the anchored object instructions.

Next, group your objects together and apply the anchor style as you were trying to do before, and the appearance will stay the same, but will now obey the anchored instruction rule.

The bad news is that if you change an object style, items that were grouped in this fashion will no longer obey their old style rules and maintain their present appearance.

Wish i’d known this trick earlier though, I could’ve saved myself hours on a recent project!

Colly

I think I know what you mean. Have you tried “layout zone” by automatication? lets you exports selections of an indesign file to another indesign file… have a look at the link and i’m sure it will do what you’re after.

https://www.automatication.com/index.php?id=7

Colin

I’ve made an improvement to John’s script that presents a dialog box to select a “source” Paragraph style (instead of going into the code and typing the paragraph style out each time the script needs to be run). From there, the script runs as per John’s script:

//https://forums.adobe.com/thread/681085 (Ariel’s script to select a paragraph style)
//https://forums.adobe.com/message/5888276 (jkorchok2’s script to apply grep styles from a predefined paragraph style)
//This utility will copy GREP styles into styles that are nested in up to two levels of groups i.e. Main Style Group>Headings Group>Heading 1
myDoc = app.activeDocument;
myStyle = SelectParagraph();

function SelectParagraph(){
mydialog = app.dialogs.add({name:”Source Paragraph Style”, canCancel:true});
myStyles = myDoc.allParagraphStyles;
var mystring = [];
for (aa = 0; aa < myStyles.length; aa ++){
mystring[aa] = myStyles[aa].name;
if (myStyles[aa].parent.constructor.name == “ParagraphStyleGroup”) mystring[aa]+=” [“+myStyles[aa].parent.name+”]”;
}
with (mydialog.dialogColumns.add()){
staticTexts.add({staticLabel:”Please choose:”});
}
with (mydialog.dialogColumns.add()){
mymenu = dropdowns.add({stringList:mystring, selectedIndex:0});
}
if (mydialog.show()) myresult = myStyles[mymenu.selectedIndex]
else myresult =-1;
mydialog.destroy();
return(myresult);
}

var theDoc = app.activeDocument;
var pStyles = theDoc.allParagraphStyles;
var pStyleStringList = [];// listbox
fillpStyleStringList();
var getpStyleIndexinpStyles = selectpStyle(pStyleStringList);
var selectedpStylesByName = getSelectedpStyleNames(getpStyleIndexinpStyles);
l = selectedpStylesByName.length;

while(l–){setGrepStyle([selectedpStylesByName[l][0]],[selectedpStylesByName[l][1]],[selectedpStylesByName[l][2]])}

function fillpStyleStringList(){
for(i = 0 ; i < pStyles.length; i++){
if(pStyles[i].parent.parent.toString() === ‘[object ParagraphStyleGroup]’){
pStyleStringList.push(‘Group: ‘ + pStyles[i].parent.parent.name + ‘, Subgroup: ‘ + pStyles[i].parent.name + ‘, Name: ‘ + pStyles[i].name);
}else if(pStyles[i].parent.toString() === ‘[object ParagraphStyleGroup]’){
pStyleStringList.push(‘Subgroup: ‘ + pStyles[i].parent.name + ‘, Name: ‘ + pStyles[i].name);
}else{
pStyleStringList.push(‘Name: ‘ + pStyles[i].name);
}
}
}

function selectpStyle (array){
var myWindow = new Window (“dialog”, “Please select the target paragraph styles.”);
var myInputGroup = myWindow.add (“group”);
var select = myInputGroup.add (“listbox”, [0, 0, 300, 300], array, {scrolling: true, multiselect: true});
var myButtonGroup = myWindow.add (“group”);
myButtonGroup.add (“button”, undefined, “OK”);
myButtonGroup.add (“button”, undefined, “Cancel”);
if (myWindow.show() == 1){
var mySelection = select.selection;
var tmpList = [];
for(g = 0; g < mySelection.length; g++){
tmpList.push(mySelection[g].index);
}
return tmpList;
myWindow.close();
}else{
exit();
}
}

function getSelectedpStyleNames(getpStylesIndexinpStyles){
var currentTargetpStyleName;
var SelectedNameArray = new Array();
for(j = 0; j < getpStylesIndexinpStyles.length; j++){
var tempArray = new Array(2);
currentTargetpStyleName = pStyles[getpStyleIndexinpStyles[j]].name;
currentTargetpStyleSubgroup = pStyles[getpStyleIndexinpStyles[j]].parent.name;
currentTargetpStyleGroup = pStyles[getpStyleIndexinpStyles[j]].parent.parent.name;
tempArray[0] = currentTargetpStyleGroup;
tempArray[1] = currentTargetpStyleSubgroup;
tempArray[2] = currentTargetpStyleName;
SelectedNameArray[j] = tempArray;
}
return SelectedNameArray;
}

function setGrepStyle(targetGroup, targetSubgroup, targetName){
var target
error = “”;
basepStyle = myresult;
if (!basepStyle.isValid) error = ‘Source style does not exist’;
if(targetGroup != “” && targetGroup != theDoc.name && targetGroup != app.name){
var temptarget = theDoc.paragraphStyleGroups.itemByName(targetGroup.toString());
target = temptarget.paragraphStyleGroups.itemByName(targetSubgroup.toString()).paragraphStyles.itemByName(targetName.toString());
}else if(targetSubgroup != “” && targetSubgroup != theDoc.name && targetSubgroup != app.name){
target = theDoc.paragraphStyleGroups.itemByName(targetSubgroup.toString()).paragraphStyles.itemByName(targetName.toString());
}else{
target = theDoc.paragraphStyles.itemByName(targetName.toString());
}
if (!target.isValid) error += ‘\rTarget style does not exist’;
if (error != “”){alert (error); exit()}
gs = basepStyle.nestedGrepStyles;
for (i = 0; i < gs.length; i++){
target.nestedGrepStyles.add (gs[i].properties);
}
}