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clairer75645299
clairer75645299
Participant
August 28, 2021
Answered

Find/Change changing items to Black instead of spot colour

  • August 28, 2021
  • 4 replies
  • 628 views

I'm trying to find all objects with a Black stroke in my document and change them to a spot colour (called Text Black in my document), but Find/Change isn't changing them – or rather it is 'changing' them to Black (if I Find objects with another coloured stroke – or fill – and ask InDesign to change it to Text Black using the Find/Change function, it changes the colour to Black). I can manually change the colour, but this is very time consuming as there are a lot of lines.

 

What am I doing wrong? Is it something to do with the spot colour? I've attached a screen grab of the 'before' and 'after' changing the colour, and a screengrab of my spot colour set-up.

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Steve Werner

It looks like you're using InDesign CC 2021.

 

You should try the new Find/Change Color feature introduced in this version. See the "Colour" tab in the Find/Change dialog.

 

 

Here's the link to the Help file:

 

https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/find-change.html#locate-colors

 

 

 

4 replies

Steve Werner
Community Expert
Steve WernerCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
August 29, 2021

It looks like you're using InDesign CC 2021.

 

You should try the new Find/Change Color feature introduced in this version. See the "Colour" tab in the Find/Change dialog.

 

 

Here's the link to the Help file:

 

https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/find-change.html#locate-colors

 

 

 

    Brad @ Roaring Mouse
    Community Expert
    Brad @ Roaring MouseCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    August 28, 2021

    Confirmed. Something's up.

    I was able to see the same issue as yourself using CC2021. Saved the file back to CC2020 and it worked fine.

     

     

    Willi Adelberger
    Community Expert
    Willi AdelbergerCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    August 28, 2021

    For your future workflow it would be good to work complete with object styles which will allow you to make global changes with a single click. Create styles once and use them in all documents. Use the very same name. It is valid not only for object styles, but also for Paragraph, Character, Table and Cell styles. You can save them in Libraries, or if you want to have them available in all documents, import them in your InDesign Style Panels. Every new document will have the same styles.

     

    Why use the same name?

    If you have identical style names (they can have different properties in different documents), you can build some automatisation, like style tagging from improted files, tocs, etc. 

     

    Paragraph styles are also important for object styles as they are a part of them.

    Luke Jennings3
    Community Expert
    Luke Jennings3Community Expert
    Community Expert
    August 28, 2021

    It's working for me here.

    Can you confirm the spot color is appearing in your swatches?

    Try changing the Text Black swatch to red, as a test.

    Export to PDF and check the colors in Acrobat using Output Preview.

    Try creating a new document and testing it there, if it works, you may need to export your document as IDML and then open and save it as .indd

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