How to record the switching of artboards in Actions (or is there another automated way?)

[100incomes]

With the bug in Illustrator still not resolved around a CMYK document and Export For Screens not exporting to RGB (needed for 3D programs), we have to resort to a set of recorded Actions instead.

The problem is, we cannot find a way to record the switching of artboards, which means we have to do one by one, so it is hardly better than using the legacy Save For Web method manually.

Is there a way to record in an Action the changing of artboards, or, perhaps a way via scripting?

[Silly-V]

This will be most useful in cases where your documents are standardized to have the same predictable artboards, or artboard-areas of sorts. What you can do it put a series of guide rectangles (not really guides) so that you can select each one by note and set the active artboard to it's shape by Fit to Artboard Artwork Bounds command. Then you do the export and activate the next rectangle to fit the active artboard to it. You could also have it come all the way back around to reset the original artboard. However this will only work if you ensure to start on that artboard as active, first.

Also you could lay down paths with the rectangle tool, etc, or a shape with "Insert select path" flyout command in the Actions panel. Then you can use the command to Convert to Artboard, and you'll have one extra artboard which is then moved around but a script will need to delete it.

However if you plan on doing the exports and not saving the document, you'll be able to simply get away with having the guide rectangles and selecting each one and converting each one to a new artboard so it becomes the active artboard and you get double the artboards with pairs one on top of each other, which for exports should be not an issue. Then when you close the document without changes it's all good since all the new-created stuff goes away..

[100incomes]

Hey Silly-V, thanks so much for taking the time. It's shame it has to be a kind of hack to make it happen, but I think I follow so will give it a shot and report back 🙂

[Silly-V]

Or you can go full-scripting with this one and make it do exports however you'd like, it depends on your needs and resources. If you are all action-based and everyone knows all about actions, keeping it all-actions is going to be natural. But if you're already using some actions that call scripts via the File > Scripts menu item or use stand-alone scripts or have a person that can do some javascript, then you could easily take care of the whole mess by doing exactly what you want, how you want it.