How to delete all formats in a doc with minimal keystrokes?

[TeraRecon]

Hello,

I'm cleaning out a bunch of old paragraph formats in a book, and then I'm adding in new formats. I did the first document in the book by hand so that it has exactly the formats I want. Several of the formats have new names, as well as new settings.

Now I'm copying the new formats to the other documents in the book. However, if I simply copy them, this does not remove the old ones from the other documents. So instead, I'm removing all the old formats first (even ones that have been preserved in the new set of formats), and then copying the new ones from the document I changed by hand.

Here's the problem: there are nearly 100 formats in the old format list. I can't find a way to do one "remove all formats" operation, so I have to click "delete" for each format. There are 22 documents in this book. That is a lot of mouse clicks. The upper joints of the fingers I use for the mouse are already developing arthritis from too many mouse clicks! In this age of repetitive stress injuries, why doesn't Adobe design the UI of its products to minimize mouse clicks? I also can't find any keyboard sequence that will perform the same function.

Is there any way to do any of the following:

• Remove all formats of a particular type (eg, paragraph formats) using only one or two keyboard and/or mouse operations? This could be a "remove all" button, or maybe it could allow multiple selections from the catalog list, and then one could click Delete once.

• Copy new formats from one doc to another so that the whole set of formats is overwritten with the new set? (In other words, replace the catalog in the destination doc with the catalog in the source doc, rather than simply adding it to what is there.

• Allow the delete button to accept the action of holding down the mouse to continue deleting, rather than making the user perform the click operation over and over.

Can anyone suggest alternatives?

I'm using FrameMaker 2015 on a Windows 8 platform.

Thank you!

[Barb Binder · Accepted solution]

Two ideas for you:

1.) Use the keyboard to speed up the workflow:

1. Esc o p c opens the paragraph catalog (sequential keystrokes)
2. Alt+D selects Delete
3. Hold Alt+E down until all the formats are gone (it's fast!)
4. Enter=done.

I say "open paragraph catalog" for the first one, and using that mnemonic, Esc o c c is open character catalog, and Esc o t c is open table catalog.

2.) As you have figured out, FrameMaker is awesome at adding formats to documents, and not so great at removing them. If money is no object, take a look at Finalizer, which automates removal. (Note: I went to get the link for you, but I'm not finding it through google. Maybe someone else can drop it in the thread. It was very expensive plug-in but was really awesome. I haven't used it in a few years and hoping it is not gone.)

[TeraRecon]

Thanks!! That worked. In fact, I discovered that you can open the catalog with the mouse and even open the delete function using the mouse, and still use Alt+E to delete everything. The main problem for me was the repeated clicks for each format - 100 for each doc, 22 docs = 2200 clicks! Now down to 3 or 4. My finger joints thank you, too.

[Barb Binder]

I discovered that you can open the catalog with the mouse and even open the delete function using the mouse, and still use Alt+E to delete everything.

Absolutely! And when I teach this to my students, I encourage the use of mnemonics to help them remember the shortcuts. So to focus on the one that you like, we say "eeeeeeeee" when we delete all the formats. Maybe that will make you smile while you rapidly delete everything from the catalogs, and protect your joints for another day.

[Urthie2011]

Is there a way to do this with variables and conditional tags? I still wish that Adobe had a way to bulk delete conditional tags and variables. I just tried it in FM2017 and it still doesn't allow deleting across a book.

[Barb Binder]

There's no deleting across a book. Adding formatting (via File > Import > Formats) yes, but not deleting. It's on a chapter-by-chapter basis.

Alt E is the Windows shortcut to access Delete in the catalogs. Old versions of Windows made this easy to discover—when you press the Alt key, a letter would underline for every command. Delete would appear as Delete.

Prior to Fm9, when the Conditional Text pod was a dialog box, Alt E probably worked (purists may chime in here to point out that this is a Mac screen shot, but it looked the same in Windows):

The two pods you are asking about don't have commands to access via keyboard shortcuts, they have a trash can icon. And Alt E isn't working in FM 2015.

The reason for my long-winded "if there is, I don't know what it is" answer is because this is an excellent time to remind you (the "collective you" reading this thread), that FrameMaker would be greatly improved by making it as easy to remove formatting from a book as adding it. That's why I had to buy Finalizer a few years back—and why I'm sad it appears to be MIA online. As expensive as it was, it saved the client money in the long run.

Click here to enter feature requests: Tracker.

[Lothar Voigt]

1.) Use the keyboard to speed up the workflow:

1. Esc o p c opens the paragraph catalog (sequential keystrokes)
2. Alt+D selects Delete
3. Hold Alt+E down until all the formats are gone (it's fast!)
4. Enter=done.

It seems to be different in the German version:

1. Esc p a K
2. Alt+L
3. Alt+L
4. Alt+Z

[Barb Binder]

Hey thanks for that update, Lothar. And your timing is pretty funny.

I'm working in Fm 2017 and realized yesterday that the keystrokes have changed, and was going to dig up this thread and update it, but you saved me some time.

In Fm 2017, US English:

1. Esc o p c
2. *
3. Alt+D (this changed)
4. Enter

*I can't figure out how to open the Delete dialog box anymore with the keyboard. If anyone has figured it out, please let me know!

[Klaus Göbel]

Hi jwermont,

I could offer you a free script, that shows you all unused paragraph formats. You can (multi-)select which of them you want to delete.(PgfFmtCleaner)

Additionally a script, that removes unused table formats (TableFmtCleaner) and another, that removes unused variables (VariableCleaner).

But they are in German only (at the moment).

You can download them here: Fairies

Thats a whole bunch of free scripts (included a menu).