Changing bulk colours throughout large document in indesign

[Che W]

How do I change all table headers that are the same colour in indesign to another colour? The find/change edit does not seem to be working or am I not putting in enough detail? I have put details in for fill, stroke & tint and selected a replacement colour.  I have then selected search document. The result is "Can not find match"

[Derek Cross]

Have a look at Table and Cell Styles.

[Che W]

Thanks, but the document creator has not set up table or cell styles.

[vinny38]

Start by cursing the designer.

When it's done, can you tell whether or not your tables have header row?

[Che W]

No they just appear to have body rows!

[Che W]

Actually I have found how to edit the cell colour throughout now thanks to your advice. But I was also having the same issue with find/change with a coloured/stroked line that is used throughout the document, it is not finding a match.

[Eugene Tyson]

Typically - as Derek alludes to, you should have used Table and Cell styles.

If you haven't, you have a very large manual job on your hands.

If you have used a specific colour for the Tables that you know you haven't used anywhere else, you can simply delete the swatch and it will ask you to replace that swatch - as I said, you have to ensure that colour is not used anywhere else.

If you have used it anywhere else, then finding that colour and where it's used can be done through the Find Change, you would need to duplicate your swatch and call it something else, then apply that new swatch to all your other elements, like text, boxes, etc. and then you can safely delete your colour swatch and replace it.

There's a thread here with a script for applying styles to the tables

Apply a table style to all tables in the document

Another one here

https://indesignsecrets.com/script-apply-cell-styles-based-content.php

Good ones here

https://indesignsecrets.com/tackling-tables-through-scripting.php

Going by that - it should be pretty easy to script to change certain headers/footers to different colours.

Ask in the scripting forum - InDesign Scripting

If it's too difficult to delete the swatch and replace it due to too many other things assigned that swatch you could do this:

Duplicate your document

Delete the swatch in the duplicate document, and replace it.

Then manually copy and paste all your tables back across to the original document.

I'd urge you to look at table styles and cell styles - as Derek mentions.