How-to search an entire book

Forum|Forum|30 days ago
April 2, 2026
1 reply
154 views

I need to see if various things (text, styles, whatever) occur within a book. But “all documents” doesn’t work.

Thanks for any insight.

Correct answer Peter Kahrel

@Thomas_Calvin Here’s a script that can look through a book’s documents. No need to open any documents, the script does that. It keeps open only the documents in which something was found (or replaced).

https://creativepro.com/files/kahrel/indesign/find-change-in-indb.html

If you work with books a lot, this one may come in handy as well:

https://creativepro.com/files/kahrel/indesign/book-panel-extras.html

rob day

Community Expert

The documents have to be open for All Documents to work. You probably can script the opening/search of all the Book docs

Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Community Expert

A couple of shortcuts to add to @rob day ‘s post:

Select all documents in Book file and double-click on one to open all.
Cntl-Alt-Shift-S / Cmd-Opt-Shift-S to save all open documents.
Cntl-Alt-Shift-W / Cmd-Opt-Shift-W to close all open documents.

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

T

Thomas_CalvinAuthor

Inspiring

Thanks for that. I can’t wait to open 50 documents at once and see what happens.

🙄

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