Using Search in Styles
Introduction
Keith Gilbert wrote a review of Search in Styles for InDesignSecrets.com that serves as a great user guide.
Click here to read (you will be taken to a different website).
Questions? Comments?
If you have any questions or comments about Search in Styles, please write them below.
Helen
December 14, 2017 3:41 amHello,
I just purchased SearchinStyles. I was hoping I could use it to change the names of the styles with this script. Is there any way to do that? I am making an ePub out of a print InDesign file and the designer created the styles with upper case first letters and sometimes digits. InDesign doesn’t like those for creating the pub css and I was hoping to find a fast way to do that. Any help is appreciated.
Also, I could really use a short instruction sheet on the script because I keep doing things in the wrong order…the Keith Gilbert post you linked to just skims the surface. For example he explains how to select all styles with a certain font and how to change those styles to a different font…that works fine. His second example shows him using grep to select any style with the word “title” or “Title” in the style name and change both the formatting (font) and the actual style name. His example shows a list of styles, with current name on the left and new name on the right. I assumed when I saw that that I could use this to rename styles in bulk.
Is there any way to do that with this script?
Thanks
Helen H Harrison
Copper Dog Publishing
Ariel
December 20, 2017 12:17 pmHi Helen,
Yes, Search in Styles can be used to change the names of paragraph and character styles. However, specifically changing letters from uppercase to lowercase is not something that can be done easily with a simple find/change, so it can’t be done so easily with Search in Styles either. There’s no specific command to “lowercase” a letter. Each uppercase letter would need to be searched for and replaced with its lowercase equivalent, and that’s clearly too laborious a process. Interesting idea for a feature request, though!
I should try to update the documentation. As I say, any name changes that can be done with a GREP find/change are doable, but lowercasing letters is not, unfortunately, for now.
Deborah Johnson
September 10, 2018 10:43 amHi Ariel I’m having trouble using the search in styles demo version to change all of the styles in my document from a 90% Black tint swatch to 100% Black set to Overprint. The search in styles dialogue box doesn’t seem to able to distinguish the tint swatch and therefore can’t find the paragraph styles that the swatch applies to. Can you suggest a solution? Thank you.
Deborah
Deborah Johnson
September 10, 2018 11:06 amActually I figured it out! Delete the 90% Black tint swatch and replace with 100% Black and then the script finds all of the styles originally in 90% and changes the colour setting to overprint. Done!
Elaine
October 5, 2022 4:52 pmI just had my first instance of needing this script, and I can’t get it to work. The list of paragraph styles is blank, and I’m not sure how to make it populate. Clicking “Update list” doesn’t seem to have an effect.
I saved a screenshot at https://i.imgur.com/GdppbYP.jpg
As you can see, the document has numerous paragraph styles, but the list in the script dialog is empty. Find/change is set to the space before I need to change, but in the script dialog it thinks I’m looking for italic.
Ariel
October 6, 2022 8:31 pmHi Elaine,
Everything seems correct, except for the fact that you’re using the GREP tab in the Find/Change dialog.
For Search in Styles, you should use the regular “Text” tab.
Ariel