collect and export all layer and sub layer names to an excel file

So I did what you suggested and made a blank file with several empty layers and the script works fine. Once again, "Gary Error". Happens to me all the time. Evidently some of my layers are not really layers, or better said, they are layers with groups in them. What I don't understand though: if I make sure that all items are ungrouped, the ungrouped items do not really appear as layers after ungrouping. they are list in the layers panel, but aren'T really layers ... ??

Here's an example:

Layer 1,Layer 3,This is a layer,

Layer 4,Layer 7,this is a layer,

Hi Steve,

Thanks for taking the time to help me out. I tried your script. For some strange reason it doesn't seem to read all sublayers.

Here is a test with 2 different AI files. Please note that both files have the same layers and layer naming.

test1.png shows the layers as they are in the AI file.

The script outputs 3 layer names as shown here:

zahn-12,nummer-markierung,wurzel-befunde,

test2.png shows the layers as they are in the AI file. The script outputs 7 layer names as shown here:

zahn-47,nummer-markierung,teilkrone-oben,teilkrone-rechts,teilkrone-unten,teilkrone-left,wurzel-befunde,

I did double check to make sure that none of the layers have commas in their names, if that's any help.

Thanks again for all your help! If you have the time to fix this let me know - I would be glad to pay you for your time!

Thanks,

Gary

I don't know this for sure, but I would highly doubt you could export a .xls file from illustrator. Microsoft uses a proprietary binary format. You can view this by opening a regular excel file in a text editor. It's a whole lot of complete jibberish.

I would suggest writing to your file in CSV format, then you can open that in excel and then save it as a native excel file if you need to.

As to your question about sublayers, in order to dig down and get all the subLayers, you'll need a recursive function to do that. You only loop through the top level layers here. You never even attempt to access the sublayers. I'm not sure how you want the resulting file formatted, so that will be up to you to fix up to your liking, but consider this snippet:

function test()
{
    var docRef = app.activeDocument;
    var layers = docRef.layers;
    var result = "";
    function inner(lay)
    {
        for(var y=0;y<lay.layers.length;y++)
        {
            var thisInnerLay = lay.layers;
            result += thisInnerLay.name + ",";
            if(thisInnerLay.layers.length > 0)
            {
                inner(thisInnerLay);
            }
        }
    }
    
    //loop the top level layers
    for(var x=0;x<layers.length;x++)
    {
        var thisLay = layers;
        result += thisLay.name + ",";
        inner(thisLay);
        result += "\n";
    }
    $.writeln(result);
    
}
test();