How to effectively manage scripts with so many versions of Illustrator

[Jason Burnett]

I have collected dozens of useful scripts over the years and I am constantly having to find the scritps again and again every time Illustrator gets updated. I have probably five different versions running on my machine because I don't want to be shut out of a working version that I have a project in. It may be unreasonable or susperstitious, but it's the way it is.

How do you manage to keep your scripts available in each new version? Do you move your scripts folder? Do you store them in a non-standard centralized location that is easy to navigate to? Do you just struggle through trying to remember if the script was last used in pre-release, beta, the last public build? Is there any way to make this easier? I'm on Windows and every time I start up Illustrator, I have to restore my workspace, find my scripts and copy them to the latest version of Illustrator which isn't always intuitive.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Monika Gause · Accepted solution]

Depends upon how you use the scripts. If you have them in actions then you need them installed in the Presets folder.

I have my scripts in a centralized folder outside of the application folder. and use them via "Other scripts"

[m1b]

Great question! I have my scripts in a location controlled by me, not Illustrator and I use a tool to sync it with the presets folder in the application folder. (I'm on MacOS and I use Hazel app to do the syncing.)

[Ton Frederiks · Accepted solution]

I have them in a folder outside Illustrator and drag and drop them on the document.

But after an update I need to first drag and drop a script to suppress the warning dialog:

https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/automation-scripts.html

[Sergey Osokin]

I use the Scripshon Trees extension. I store the scripts in my Dropbox folder. This way I can access them from different computers. When you install a new version of Illustrator, all you have to do is open an extension window and specify the path to the single scripts folder once.