Using “QuickResize Pro”

Introduction

QuickResize Pro is an InDesign script that allows you to resize an entire InDesign document, or a single spread in it, easily and accurately, with predictable results.

InDesign itself has a “resize layout” feature. But the results can be unpredictable, messy, and often quite useless.

Installation

QuickResize Pro consists of a single .jsxbin file. One good tutorial on how to copy this into the correct folder on your computer can be found at https://www.danrodney.com/scripts/directions-installingscripts.html

Using the script

Display InDesign’s Scripts panel on the screen (Window > Utilities > Scripts), then locate and double-click on the script in the Scripts panel.

To use, type the new width and height. If you want to keep the layout proportional, click on the “Constrain proportions” checkbox, or just make sure to type width and height values that maintain the same proportion.

In the Pages section, specify whether you want to modify the entire document, or just the current spread.

Understanding the Various Options

Depending on the options you choose, you could end up with a resized document that is identical to the original, just larger or smaller, or you could get a document that is a completely different shape (and different in other ways as well) from the original document.

In this section, I will explain the options in order from identical to most different copy.

To Get an Identical, but Resized, Copy

(1) Check the Constrain proportions checkbox. The new document must obviously have the same proportions as the old document if the aim is to keep them as similar as possible.

(2) Select the option to modify the entire Document, not just the current spread. Modifying the entire document will ensure that any elements on master pages (“parent pages” in the new lingo) are also resized, as well as the document baseline grid.

(3) Check the Allow text to resize checkbox. For a perfect copy, text must be allowed to grow or shrink in proportion to the scaling factor.

(4) Check the Allow the page margins to resize checkbox. If the margins are currently 1 inch, and you are halving the size of the document, the new margins must be 0.5 inch for an exact copy.

(5) Checking “Allow margins to resize” in the previous step will automatically uncheck and disable the Snap text frames to margins and column guides checkbox. Since the margins are resizing, this option is redundant.

(6) Uncheck Redefine scaling as 100% for all text frames. Unchecking this box means that the resized text frames will show that they have been scaled: In the Transform panel, they will show the scaled percentage, e.g. Width 70% and Height 70%. Also, in the font size field, the new size will be shown in parentheses: 10pt (7pt). This can be a little annoying, but it ensures that the layout of the rescaled text is identical to the original text layout. Redefining scaling as 100% is convenient in many cases, but can cause text reflow in some instances.

Click OK. With these 6 settings, you should find that you get a resized, but otherwise identical, copy of the original document.

To Get a Non-Proportional, but Still Useful, Copy

(1) Uncheck the Constrain proportions checkbox. This will allow you to enter the new height and width values independently of each other, as required for non-proportional scaling.

(2) Although the copy is non-proportional, it is always best to select the option to modify the entire Document. If you choose to resize only the current spread, be aware that you may also need to resize the master page that it is based on, or to override all master page items on the spread in order to allow them to scale. Also, the document-wide baseline grid will not be changed, so you may need to adjust this manually. Apart from that, there is no difference between resizing the entire document or just the selected spread.

(3) If you are creating a non-proportional copy, you will almost certainly want to uncheck Allow text to resize, otherwise the type will be distorted. (However, if preventing any text reflow is essential, it is necessary to enable this option. If the non-proportional adjustment is small (a few millimeters only, say) the result may just be acceptable.)

(4) As mentioned in the previous section, for a more faithful copy, it is best to enable Allow page margins to resize. However, if it is necessary that the margins stay as they were, uncheck this option. For instance, if you are halving the size of the layout, allowing the margins to change from 1/2 inch to 1/4 inch may be cause problems at the press as the “safe zone” has been drastically reduced.

(5) If you do not allow the margins to resize, you can choose whether to Snap text frames to margins and column guides. Since all elements on the page have resized, but the margins have not (when margin-resizing is off), this means that text frames that were previously sitting on one or more of the margins will no longer abut those margins. This may be a problem. Enabling this option will solve that problem by making sure that any sides of any text frames that sat on a margin or column guide before resizing will continue to do so after resizing as well. Of course, this comes at the expense of fidelity to the original, unscaled, layout. Text frames dimensions will be adjusted (above and beyond the scaling factor) in order to ensure that they still sit on the margins.

Click OK and you should get a non-proportionally–scaled document, but still a useful layout in many cases.

Note: Unlike type, placed or embedded graphics will only ever be scaled proportionally whatever settings are chosen.

Undo

The effects of the script are completely undo-able via Edit > Undo.

Example

In the following example, the layout is being non-proportionally resized, from a width of 160mm to 210mm. The following settings have been used.