Auto Character Styles

You already know that local text overrides are bad.

If only they could be turned into character styles!

Well, now they can.

Auto Character Styles is a sophisticated solution to every designer’s worst problem: You’ve placed a Word document into InDesign and it’s full of local overrides. How do you catch them all and convert them to character styles?

Here’s the answer:

 

With Auto Character Styles, you can choose which local overrides to convert to character styles. Preserve the overrides you need. Discard the rest!

For instance, if you’re only interested in catching variations of bold, italic, semibold etc., as well as, say, any underlining, select the “Font style” option at the top of the first column, and the “Underline” option at the bottom of the last column.

Once you’ve made your selection, you can save your choices as a preset.

Auto Character Styles will search all text in the document, including tables and footnotes.

More Options, More Control

By default, Auto Character Styles will create character styles and set the styles’ properties appropriately.

For example, if the script generates an “Underline” character style, that style will be defined to apply underlining. The Create blank styles checkbox (see screenshot above) overrides this behavior. If selected, all character styles will be blank. For example, the above style will still be called “Underline,” but it will not have underline defined as one of its properties. This makes it easier in some cases for the designer to adjust the script-generated character styles to his or her needs.

Skip text if character style applied will skip any text that already has a character style applied to it. (But only if the style isn’t overridden.)

For example, if you have a style called “10 pt” applied to text, and that text is indeed 10 pt in size, it will be skipped. But if, despite the applied style, the text is 20pt in size, Auto Character Styles will consider that an override and will apply a new character style to it.

Below is a screenshot of the character-styles panel after running the script on a 128-page publication:

Bonus Feature: “Find Style”

Auto Character Styles now comes bundled with a “missing” InDesign feature: “Find Style.”

Right-click on any character style (or paragraph style) in the Character Styles or Paragraph Styles panels and you’ll see a new command: “Find Style.” Use this to be taken to the next instance of that paragraph style or character style in your document.

Once installed, this new command is available in all your documents, whether or not you have run Auto Character Styles.

One of the hassles of an add-on like Auto Character Styles is that it can create a lot of character styles! The new “Find Style” function is a real time-saver for weeding-out unwanted or redundant styles, and for many other uses.

Change how “Find Style” works by changing the current settings in InDesign’s Find/Change dialog. For instance, if Find/Change is set to search in the current story only, “Find Style” will work that way as well. Or if Find/Change is set to ignore master pages or footnotes (yes, there are options in Find/Change to do that!), “Find Style” will follow suit. So feel free to change the settings in InDesign’s Find/Change window as needed to get the result you want with “Find Style.”

“Find Style” comes bundled as a separate file, and must be placed in the Startup Scripts folder on your harddrive. More details about installing startup scripts, with screenshots, here: InDesign Startup Script Installation

Here’s a quick video just about this new bonus feature, “Find Style”:

Download the Free Auto Character Styles Demo Version

Fill in the form below to download a trial version of Auto Character Styles.

The trial version is identical to the full version, except that it is limited to documents that have a maximum of 3 pages or 1000 words.

Instant Download

To purchase the full version of Auto Character Styles for only $79, click the “Buy Now” button. Your product and serial numbers will be available for instant download when you complete the purchase.

Money-back Guarantee

If you are not satisfied with Auto Character Styles for any reason, simply let us know within 30 days of purchase for a full refund.