InDesign 2018 is here, with great new features.

Prime among them is the new “paragraph border” feature.

But as Steve Werner points out over on InDesign Secrets, it’s

difficult to set up both paragraph shading and borders on the same paragraph: many of the settings (offset, corner settings, etc.) will be the same in the two dialog boxes, but there is no way to link the settings to make it easier to edit them.

So here’s a little script to remedy that oversight. Of course, it’s not quite as convenient as a checkbox inside the paragraph style options, but it’s easy enough to use.

Instructions

  1. Select some text that has a paragraph style applied that uses shading or borders (or both).
  2. Run the script. A little window opens up:

  1. If you want the shading to match the border, click on “Use border properties.” The result will look like this in the example above:

  1. If, conversely, you want the border to match the shading, click on “Use shading properties”. The result:

That’s it! The paragraph style is modified so that the border and shading settings are now equal!

"Equalize Borders and Shading" (c) 2018 by Id-Extras.com (Bookraft LLC).
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
To read the full license, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.