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A
ancvh300
December 11, 2025
Question

Saving preferences and ruler guide color settings in a reusable profile

  • December 11, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 172 views

Is it possible to save baseline grid color settings and ruler guides color settings to some kind of new default, or a user settings profile, so that someone who routinely has to change those settings in documents they work on can do so with fewer clicks? We're using InDesign CS6. 

 

The issue: Our default color settings for ruler guides (cyan) and the baseline grid (light gray) are too light to be clearly visible for one of our team members, but those settings are ideal for many other colleagues. To change those color settings individually on each document that team member works on is a bit tedious, as they work on multiple new documents each day. These color settings appear to apply at the document level, as opposed to the user level -- as in, if the user changes the settings with one document open, the next document they open doesn't have those settings applied.

 

What we're looking for is a less tedious way to update those color settings on every document that person works on, since ruler guides and baseline grid settings are housed in different InDesign menus. Is there a possible solution out there?

2 replies

N
Nick Passmore
Participating Frequently
December 12, 2025
If I understand correctly you want to be able to swap the colours back and forth depending on the user who opens the InDesign file. I think you need two (fairly simple) scripts. One to change to your default colours and one for the team member for whom these colours do not work. 
 
If you are using macOS, something like this would work — with green and blue changed to whatever you need. 
 
It could be made too work as a single script by checking first to see the name of the user and probably even to operate on each document as it is opened.
 
tell application id "com.adobe.InDesign"
	activate
	set AllDocs to every document
	repeat with d from 1 to count of items of AllDocs
		tell item d of AllDocs
			set baseline color of grid preferences to green
			set guide color of (every guide) to blue
		end tell
	end repeat
end tell
 
If you are using Windows, I'm sure someone could show you how to do the same thing in JavaScript.

 

    rob day
    Community Expert
    rob dayCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    December 11, 2025

    Hi @ancvh300 , If you set the Ruler Guides... Color with no documents open that will become the default for all new documents. Same goes for the Preferences>Grids>Baseline Grid>Color setting—with no documents open it will become the new default.

     

    That would not change the document settings for existing documents, which could be anything. If you want the ruler and baseline grid settings to be uniform for all your documents, that could be scripted.

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