tell application "Finder" set selectedItems to selection if (count of selectedItems) = 0 then display dialog "No file selected." buttons {"OK"} default button "OK" with icon stop return end if set filePath to (item 1 of selectedItems) as alias end tell
tell application "Adobe InDesign 2025" activate open filePath with options {opening as copy:true} end tell
Well, I’m sure you know this... but if you save a file as a template—which simply means use .indt vs .indd as the file extension—InDesign will automatically open a copy.
InDesign templates are identical to InDesign documents—the only difference is that .indd defaults to open original, and .indt defaults to open copy.
I don’t know of a way to do this from inside InDesign, but there may be a way to do it from the desktop.
Based on your screen shot, it looks like you’re on a Mac. That provides some potential solutions from the macOS side.
If you start from the Finder instead of inside InDesign, you could select an InDesign document, press Command-D (keyboard shortcut for the File > Duplicate command), and then press Command-O (shortcut for File > Open). That will open the duplicate in InDesign .
Another option: When a file is selected in the macOS Finder, one of its properties in the File > Get Info window is Stationery Pad. That marks it as a template (using a macOS template property, not the InDesign template format). So if you need to open a lot of files, you could set them all to Stationery Pad and when you select them all and double-click them in the Finder, they will all open in InDesign as copies of their original files. However, a couple of disadvantages are that you might not want to leave all of them marked with the macOS Stationery Pad property, and also to mark multiple selected files at once you have to change the File > Get Info command to File > Show Inspector by holding down the Option key as you click the File menu. So maybe it’s easier to use the Duplicate shortcut.
(edit: If you got a notification that this was marked Best Answer, I accidentally selected that and then removed it, sorry)
thanks for tip, at least for my new mac knowledge…
but making physical copies is no way to go for me, I open many files a day and deleting them then is another useless work
probably for explanation - i edit images linked to indesign documents sitting on dropbox… i could for sure open original file, but i dont want to accidentaly save original file (which I'm use to do sometimes unthinkingly) and then restore it, it is same complication
i just need simply open copy as quckly as possible, edit image and then close copy without saving, deleting etc.
it reminds me that macOS is not as perfect as sometimes seems to be - I can do this on PC very simple without using mouse, just hitting Alt+C and it selects right checkbox… this Alt key functionality I'm missing most of all on my mac across whole system and also dialog windows in apps, much more work and slowing down workflow because having to use mouse
@Conrad_C I can do this on PC very simple without using mouse, just hitting Alt+C and it selects right checkbox… this Alt key functionality I'm missing
No, you’re not really missing it, it just isn’t turned on. Based on what you said, I think Leo R. has a good suggestion in his reply: Enable the Keyboard Navigation option for macOS. If you do what he says (in System Settings > Keyboard, enable Keyboard Navigation), then you can do what you want as shown in the demo below where I keyboard-navigate to the Copy button.
In the demo, the purple box shows my keystrokes, and you can also see that the pointer does not move because I’m selecting the Open Copy button only with the keyboard. I chose to Shift-Tab because that took fewer keystrokes to get to Open Copy than pressing the Tab key.
There is no direct access to that button with the keyboard, unfortunately. But if you use third-party macro software, you could automate pressing the correct number of Tab or Shift-Tab keystrokes to select Open Copy.
It would need to be saved as an AppleScript file and given it a keyboard shortcut to use instead of Command-O
use AppleScript version "2.4" -- Yosemite (10.10) or later use scripting additions
ignoring application responses tell application id "com.adobe.InDesign" activate invoke menu action id 259 end tell
end ignoring
delay 0.1 -- This may need to be longer depending on how fast the Mac is
tell application id "com.apple.systemevents" tell application process "Adobe InDesign 2024" click radio button "Open Copy" of radio group 1 of window "Open" end tell end tell