Adjustment to size of Primary Text Frame on Parent Page is not updated in Document

Question

Adjustment to size of Primary Text Frame on Parent Page is not updated on document pages where the Parent Page is already applied.

Assumptions: all pages in document use parent pages, and all parent pages use Primary Text Frames. No document pages have any Parent Page overrides.

Here's the workflow:

Parent Page D uses Primary Text Frame with top of frame inset to 30 mm on Y axis, and is used for the first page of every book chapter.
On Parent Page D, I adjust the height of the primary text frame to something other than 30 mm (say 40 mm).
The document pages with Parent Page D already applied do not automatically resize. I'm forced to manually reapply Parent Page D to all the relevant pages in the document.

This is cumbersome and time-consuming. Making a different type of change to a Parent Page, such as a para style, is automatically applied everywhere. Can someone say if this is expected behavior?

Robert at ID-Tasker · Accepted Answer

Yes, primary text frames refresh without re-applying the parent. More importantly, you can drage a parent that has a primary text frame onto any page that has a primary text frame, and the page is immediatedly updated withe elements and text is re-flowed, if applicable. Primary text frames have the little black page icon showing at the top left side when the frame is selected. They are set up on the parent page when the first creating the document. They can be added after the fact, but it's a convoluted process.

@mazdaspeed

https://helpx.adobe.com/uk/indesign/using/parent-pages.html

Override parent item attributes

Overriding a parent item puts a copy of it on the document page without breaking its association with the parent page. Once the item itself is overridden, you can selectively override one or more attributes of the item to customize it. For example, you can change the fill color of the local copy. After that, changes to the fill color on the parent page itself will not update to the local copy. However, other attributes, such as size, will continue to update because they have not been overridden on the local copy. Overrides can be removed later to make the object match the parent.

Attributes you can override for a parent page object include strokes, fills, contents of a frame, and any transformations (such as rotating, scaling, shearing, or resizing), corner options, text frame options, lock state, transparency, and object effects.

Somehow at some point - directly or indirectly - you must've changed the size / location of the TFs on document chapter pages and broke the link to TF on Master / Parent.

Eugene Tyson · Answer

I came up with this script @mazdaspeed

It will check the pages for overwritten Parent Page items
However, if the item is deleted it won't find it - not sure if that's an issue for you - if it's deleted it won't show the result

Copy this text to a plain text editor - save it as a name you want and change the File Extension to .jsx

https://creativepro.com/how-to-install-scripts-in-indesign/

It should list the pages where items have been overwritten

#target indesign

// Function to check for overridden items and log their page numbers and details
function listOverriddenItems() {
    var doc = app.activeDocument;
    var overriddenItems = [];

    // Loop through all the pages in the document
    for (var i = 0; i < doc.pages.length; i++) {
        var page = doc.pages[i];
        var pageItems = page.allPageItems;

        // Loop through all items on the page
        for (var j = 0; j < pageItems.length; j++) {
            var item = pageItems[j];

            // Check if the item is overridden
            if (item.overridden) {
                var itemInfo = {
                    pageNumber: page.name,
                    itemName: item.name,
                    itemType: item.constructor.name
                };
                overriddenItems.push(itemInfo);
            }
        }
    }

    // Log the results
    if (overriddenItems.length > 0) {
        var result = "Overridden items found:\n\n";
        for (var k = 0; k < overriddenItems.length; k++) {
            result += "Page: " + overriddenItems[k].pageNumber + ", Item: " + overriddenItems[k].itemName + " (" + overriddenItems[k].itemType + ")\n";
        }
        alert(result);
    } else {
        alert("No overridden items found.");
    }
}

// Run the function
listOverriddenItems();

";        for (var k = 0; k < overriddenItems.length; k++) {            result += "Page: " + overriddenItems[k].pageNumber + ", Item: " + overriddenItems[k].itemName + " (" + overriddenItems[k].itemType + ")
";        }        alert(result);    } else {        alert("No overridden items found.");    }}// Run the functionlistOverriddenItems();

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