Indesign show linked files, but reversed (show all files using the image)

[Dan Niemi]

Is there any way that I could see which (if any) indesign documents link to a specific image. I'm on a mac, so Ransack is not an option for me as mentioned here.

Thanks!

[Stephen Marsh]

Sure, one way – here I have used the Finder’s search command to isolate .indd files in a specific location:

Next I dragged the .indd files from the search window onto TextWrangler.app or BBEdit.app and used the multi-file search command to search for a specific keyword in the open files:

Note: word spaces in the file path need to be escaped with %20 characters:

P9070 Front with Paper.tif

P9070%20Front%20with%20Paper.tif

[Stephen Marsh · Accepted solution]

OK, even better and simpler, a cross platform solution that uses a native Bridge feature - the Find command with the “All Metadata” criteria:

[Dan Niemi]

Thank you Stephen! The bridge method looks to be working well. (Just had to remember to escape the spaces)

I appreciate the help!

Hmmm, now maybe I can add an automator action to set this up as a service when right clicking the specific file.

[Stephen Marsh]

Hi Dan, you shouldn’t need to escape the spaces in the Bridge search. Forget the first method of using Finder/TextWrangler to “look under the hood” as Bridge does all that without the extra steps and possibility of damaging the .indd files by overwriting them from the text editor.

EDIT: Damn, one DOES need to escape the word spaces in the file when using Bridge, despite the Links metadata panel showing them “plain” – one still needs to use the URI formatting that is also indicated under file info raw metadata as using %20.

This is also consistent with what ExifTool reports:

[XMP-xmpMM]     IngredientsFilePath:    file:///Users/<username>/Desktop/File%20A.psd

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