How to Export Entire InDesign Story to RTF or Plain Text Without Scripting

Forum|Forum|25 days ago
March 11, 2026
3 replies
52 views

Hello. Trying to change an InDesign document- about 200 pages, to a continuous plain text document like Text Edit .rtf.

Looking up procedure advice is all about scripting, which I don’t even want to get into.

Please help! I’m on a deadline this morning and need to get the story in a plain text format for the publisher to create an eBook.

Converting an Acrobat PDF to RTF results in one blank page!

Peter Spier

Community Expert

Well…

Script does just what the name says -- export ALL stories, including every page number, header, footer or other irrelevant text frame, and of course each one is a separate file.

I usually prefer to just stick a cursor in a story I want to export and use File > Export and do them one at a time.

Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Community Expert

There is a script included with InDesign for this:

Scripts panel>Application>Samples>JavaScript>ExportAllStories.jsx

David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

M

Manan Joshi

Community Expert

Hi @rgbnites you don’t have to get your hands dirty with scripting. InDesign installation comes with a script installed that you can just execute to get it done. See the following discussion for more details, i am sure it will help you

-Manan

Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Community Expert

Sorry @Manan Joshi , your post wasn’t showing when I typed mine...

David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

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