Automator shortcut does not work from InDesign

[Rota]

I have made a Quick Action workflow in Automator that should open Microsoft Outlook when a keyboard shortcut is pressed. This works in all apps (including Photoshop) but it does nothing in InDesign. Does anyone know why this is and how to make it work?

Some more info:

• macOS version: Sonoma 14.1.1
• InDesign version 2024
• Automator version 2.10

Any and all help is appreciated! Please feel free to ask clarifying questions.

[leo.r]

Does it happen with any shortcut? Are you sure your shortcuts are not assigned to anything in InDesign already? Also, InDesign isn't fully compatible with Sonoma yet (although your issue is probably not related to this).

[Rota]

The shortcut I'm using is Ctrl+Shift+Command+9. I don't think that already does something in InDesign by default. The Adobe site does not mention it as a default keyboard shortcut at least. Is there another way to check?

[leo.r]

I never used Automator to assign shortcuts to anything so I simply don't know how reliable this is.

I just tried Keyboard Maestro - albeit on Ventura - and a global shortcut to launch Outlook does work from InDesign.

Keyboard Maestro is powerful but not free. There should be several other utilities that let launch apps via shortcuts - some of them free - but I can't name any off the top of my head right now (sorry). 

[leo.r]

P.S. I just tried Shortcuts (Apple's newer reincarnation of Automator) on both Ventura and Sonoma.

Shortcuts most likely uses the same mechanism to launch an app as Automator.

I can confirm that a global shortcut to launch an app simply doesn't work from all apps, including InDesign. It doesn't work from many other apps either (but does work from some, including Photoshop and Illustrator).

So I think the shortcut feature is just half-backed in Apple's productivity utilities. You should have better luck with 3rd-party products.