Insert Note at text cursor

Question

Please accept my sincere apologies for the very basic question but I've been a scripting beginner for 20 years and am still struggling.

I would like an InCopy script to insert a Note (containing predetermined text) at the cursor insertion point in text. I thought I would simply adapt the InsertNote.jsx sample supplied with the scripting guide but I don't understand how to get the Note to insert at the text cursor position, rather than at the beginning or end of the story.

Can anyone help me, please? I can't seem to find the answer in the scripting guide in either the Text or Notes chapters.

Thanks,

Alistair

TᴀW · Accepted Answer

Try this:myNote = app.selection[0].notes.add();myNote.texts[0].contents = "Hello World!";This will add a note at the cursor position, and add "Hello World!" to its contents.Tested in InDesign, but will probably work in InCopy as well.Whatever is currently selected can be accessed through app.selection[0]. So if you've got a text cursor flashing in the middle of some text, this will return an InsertionPoint. InsertionPoints have a "notes" property, and typically whenever something has a plural property (textFrames, notes, rectangles), that plural property has an add() method which returns the same object in the singular (textFrame, note, rectangle) which is a single instance of the object.HTH,Ariel

Jongware · Answer

It's easier than you think, although I agree that the example is rather useless. A Note gets added to an insertion point; and an insertion point is every position that you can click a text cursor on.

The text cursor position is always a selection; its length is the length of the selected text and may thus be 0.

This means you only need this short code to add a note at the cursor:

var myNote = app.selection[0].insertionPoints.item(0).notes.add();
//Add text to the note
myNote.texts.item(0).contents = "This is a note.";

You can experiment to see how the "insertion point" code inside a selection works if you select more than one character: the note will always appear at the start of the selection, which is its "item(0)".

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