Select “Show Text Threads” from the View menu, and examine the direction in which the boxes are linked …

You can't use InDesign to scan through a folder. You also can't really rely 100% on an external utility that can scan binary files for text — the text in the file may be broken into several parts, or contain invisible characters such as discretionary hyphens or non-breaking spaces, or even visible characters such as ±, that are stored as Unicode values.

If you really want to find that elusive document, open all in InDesign and do an “All Documents” search.

You can always open an additional window view of the same document and have these views side by side. You can easily drag items from one side to another.

In the mean, I've written a script that just might make life a bit easier: MagicObjectSwapper.

There is nothing really 'magically' about it (unless you don't know how to write scripts); it puts a 'marker' in the Script Label of the item you have currently selected, or — if it finds an item with that particular label — it asks you if it should swap the two around.

You can also remove the marker, but it's really not necessary. If you want to mark another object, it'll automatically remove the previous one.

A few trivial notes:

1. It only, and exclusively, works with items that are placed immediately onto a page (or master page, as it happens). It does not work with objects inside other objects. I probably could add that, but it may lead to a whole new snakepit of probable problems.

2. It doesn't work cross-document. As in the previous point, it can probably be added, but I just didn't feel like it. Besides, copying between two documents is fairly easy already.

3. It doesn't really check if the object you are moving around is locked. No idea what will happen if it is. Probably the script just stops with an error.

4. It's layer-illiterate. It doesn't know layers, doesn't remember layers, and doesn't care about layers.

5. There are a few other utilities that use script labels (sorry, was it APID? Numb brain to-day). This script might accidentally overwrite a label that was used for something else. If unsure, open the Script Label panel and click on a few items. If you see data appear, you were apparently using something already.

The script is a bit too long to post verbatim, so I'll just give you the download link: https://www.jongware.com/binari…..wapper.zip

Enjoy!

You can always open an additional window view of the same document and have these views side by side. You can easily drag items from one side to another.

In the mean, I've written a script that just might make life a bit easier: MagicObjectSwapper.

There is nothing really 'magically' about it (unless you don't know how to write scripts); it puts a 'marker' in the Script Label of the item you have currently selected, or — if it finds an item with that particular label — it asks you if it should swap the two around.

You can also remove the marker, but it's really not necessary. If you want to mark another object, it'll automatically remove the previous one.

A few trivial notes:

1. It only, and exclusively, works with items that are placed immediately onto a page (or master page, as it happens). It does not work with objects inside other objects. I probably could add that, but it may lead to a whole new snakepit of probable problems.

2. It doesn't work cross-document. As in the previous point, it can probably be added, but I just didn't feel like it. Besides, copying between two documents is fairly easy already.

3. It doesn't really check if the object you are moving around is locked. No idea what will happen if it is. Probably the script just stops with an error.

4. It's layer-illiterate. It doesn't know layers, doesn't remember layers, and doesn't care about layers.

5. There are a few other utilities that use script labels (sorry, was it APID? Numb brain to-day). This script might accidentally overwrite a label that was used for something else. If unsure, open the Script Label panel and click on a few items. If you see data appear, you were apparently using something already.

The script is a bit too long to post verbatim, so I'll just give you the download link: https://www.jongware.com/binari…..wapper.zip

Enjoy!

There is a good chance it happened like this:

1. You selected a character style without any selection in your document. This sets InDesign's default for all following text.

2. You pasted text from somewhere else excluding formatting. In that case, ID uses the default formatting for your text — font, size, paragraph style and character style.

3. err… just 2 points really.

If you select nothing at all (hit Shift+Ctrl+A, or select Deselect All in the Edit menu, or select your black arrow and click outside anything and everything), does your Character Style panel point to “[None]”, or does it indicate some other style? If it does, simply select “[None]” to set this again as default. (It won't help you for stuff you already placed, but next time it'll be better.)

There is a good chance it happened like this:

1. You selected a character style without any selection in your document. This sets InDesign's default for all following text.

2. You pasted text from somewhere else excluding formatting. In that case, ID uses the default formatting for your text — font, size, paragraph style and character style.

3. err… just 2 points really.

If you select nothing at all (hit Shift+Ctrl+A, or select Deselect All in the Edit menu, or select your black arrow and click outside anything and everything), does your Character Style panel point to “[None]”, or does it indicate some other style? If it does, simply select “[None]” to set this again as default. (It won't help you for stuff you already placed, but next time it'll be better.)

By script: sure! This was a bit of fun.

Place your text cursor into your numbered list as it is now, and be sure to place it inside the first numbered paragraph that should be changed. This script scans to the end of the current list, then reverses the list, putting the first number (which may not be '1'!) into the last item and counting down as it goes up to where you started the script.

(Copy, paste into a plain text editor — Notepad, Textedit in plain text mode; best is Adobe's own ESTK Editor –, save as “ReverseNumberedList.jsx” into your User Scripts folder; it should automatically appear in the Scripts panel.)

if (app.selection.length == 0 || !(app.selection[0] instanceof InsertionPoint))
{
alert (“Please place the text cursor in the first paragraph with a numbered list…”);
exit(0);
}
firstp = app.selection[0].paragraphs[0];
if (firstp == null || firstp.bulletsAndNumberingListType != ListType.NUMBERED_LIST)
{
alert (“That's not a numbered list…”);
exit(0);
}
lastp = firstp;
while (lastp.paragraphs.nextItem(lastp) != null && lastp.paragraphs.nextItem(lastp).bulletsAndNumberingListType == ListType.NUMBERED_LIST)
lastp = lastp.paragraphs.nextItem(lastp);

// Reached the end of this numbered list. So…
var count = firstp.numberingResultNumber;
do
{
lastp.properties = ({numberingContinue:false, numberingStartAt:count});
count++;
if (lastp == firstp)
break;
lastp = lastp.paragraphs.previousItem(lastp);
} while (1);