InDesign Revision/Change Bars

Question

Hello,I am trying to find an easy way to add revision bars (or change bars) to InDesign documents. Typically, in aircraft manufacturer documents, a thin revision bar appears in the margins to indicate that there has been a technical change since the previous version of that document. InDesign does not currently have a feature that will create these automatically. It does have a very limited Track Changes feature, but it is only usable in Story Editor. There are a couple plug ins (Kerniff Publishing Edit Marks and CtrlSoftware's CtrlChanges) out there, but I am not confident in these as a solution due to the high cost for singular licenses. I am also not sure that they would be any more efficient than doing it manually (drawing a vertical line and applying an object style that would place it in the margins with the desired attributes). The problem with this is the chance of user error is high, especially if a document goes through multiple iterations, complex revisions involving images or tables, or passing through the hands of multiple stakeholders. It is also hard to differentiate the changes if they are purely cosmetic (something moved slightly) versus a technical change. Only technical changes have to be documented. Does anyone have any suggestions or solutions? Or does anyone have any experience with the aforementioned plugins? Or maybe an existing (hopefully free) script that would help?Or does anyone know if it possible to do this in Adobe Acrobat after exporting out on InDesign? (In an automated / efficient way, not painstakely drawing the items manually in Acrobat).Thanks for any help!

Robert at ID-Tasker · Answer

@Vicki McD

If you work on a PC - probably my ID-Tasker - but not free - would be more than helpful?

It can load all the changes and you can go thought them by double clicking on the list of the results:

The other tools might be cheaper - but my Tool is way more versatile - can help you with pretty much anything else and is not limited to InDesign.

After you load Changes - you can sort and filter by type, length, user, etc.

As you can see on the screenshot - Contents column - you have a preview of what has been inserted - or removed - which could be important factor in deciding - even automatically, if you also include Length info - if the change is important or not.

Then, you can use remaining results and automatically Anchor bars - same way as ObjectStyles are applied in this thread:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/can-i-automatically-apply-an-object-style-based-on-paragraph-style/m-p/14881233#M590477

Just 2nd Task would have to be a bit different - to whatever you would do manually.

And then, if you can find a way to distinguish which changes are important - you can process multiple files automatically.

If not - then you can still load them from multiple documents and decide case-by-case - with a single click on a dedicated Task to anchor bar.

You can of course anchor different bars - or any other shape - you just need to execute a different Task.

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