Dr Simon Andrew Casey - Where do I find Spot Colors in InDesign?

If you're dealing with a lot of incoming PDFs of ads etc, then I'd recommend jane-e's suggestion of using Acrobat Preflight. Once you get your head around its interface, you can create a profile and corresponding droplet that will solve the spot colour issue and many others that you'll inevitably see no matter how clear your file submission guidelines are! Just drop the PDFs onto the droplet and they're fixed.

drsimonandrewcasey7  wrote I'm usually an AE or PS user, but I'm doing a job in InDesign, and have had trouble with people supplying non-overprint-friendly pdfs for me to use in the layout.

If the issue is that all these spot colors are coming from multiple PDFs that people are supplying to you, can you use the Ink Manager in Acrobat to convert the Spot colors to CMYK before you bring the PDFs into InDesign?

Two ways: click "Convert all" or click the icon to convert individually

Alternatively use Preflight in Acrobat to convert to CMYK and get rid of the spot colors.

Where do I find these offenders to change them to process?

The Swatches panel shows the color's model. The spot color icon has a circle:

You can use Ink Manager to convert spots to process, but if there are tints ink manager does not make the best conversion and you should change the swatch via Swatch Options.

FWIW: The answer to your ACTUAL question (in my opinion) is to use the Seperations Preview:

This will list any colours in use in the document without having to do a find/replace etc...

However you could also use the Ink Manager to make adjustments to any used spot colours to convert them to process:

This article is quite useful: https://indesignsecrets.com/find-where-that-colors-used.php

HOWEVER: I would re-iterate why you need so many Spot Colours???

This will cost you a LARGE sum to print professionally and a lot of printers cannot handle more than 5-6 Spot colours (to my knowledge anyway - Happy to be corrected).

I agree with vinny38​. Why do you need so many Spot colours? I know this isn't the question asked... However it is relevant.

Hi,

To add a spot colour to use in your InDesign document, click on the Option menu icon at the top right of the colour swatch panel.

1. click on the Option menu icon at the top right of the colour swatch panel.
2. Select 'New Colour Swatch'
3. In the new swatch panel, use the Colour Mode drop-down list to select the colour book you want, Like 'Pantone Solid Coated',
4. Type the colour number you require and click on the Add button to add the colour to your Swatch Panel
5. Repeat the operation from step 4 as needed
6. close the window
7. Select your object/text to apply the colours

Are these colors defined in your InDesign document, or are they all added because of placed images?

Hi

Can you explain why you need to work with so many spot colors? I just can't see any reason