Close all documents in one shot or just one.

[Madelp]

Hello.
I would like to know if there is a setting to change so that, when I close Indesign, a dialog box appears asking me if I want to close all open indesign files (if any), like in PDFs where the same question is asked until I check “Don't ask me again”.

Is this possible? Or does this option not exist?

[Abhishek Rao]

Hi @Madelp,

Thanks for reaching out. Currently, InDesign does not have a built-in feature to prompt you with a dialog box asking if you want to close all open documents when closing the application. The default behavior is to close each document individually without this prompt.

I understand that this functionality is important to you, and I apologize for its unavailability at this time. Would you mind creating a UserVoice for this feature request (Adobe InDesign: Feature Requests: Top (5077 ideas) – Adobe InDesign (https://adobe.ly/4fC6DmU)) and adding your comments there? Doing this will help us prioritize this request, and you will be notified of any updates.

Feel free to reach out if you have more questions or need assistance. We'd be happy to help.

Thanks,

Abhishek Rao

[Peter Kahrel]

On reflection, it's so simple it'd be churlish not to do it:

#targetengine 'session';

app.addEventListener (Application.BEFORE_QUIT, function () {
  if (app.documents.length > 0)
    if (confirm ('Close all documents?')) {
      app.documents.everyItem().close(SaveOptions.NO);
    }
  }
});

Place this script in the (user's or the application's) startup scripts folder and restart InDesign to activate it. Now whenever you quit InDesign (and if there are any documents open) you'll be prompted to confirm whether all documents should be closed.

In this version, documents are not saved.

(I don't know how I got the time machine to work so that my later post was placed before the earlier one, but there you are.)

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

(I don't know how I go the time machine to work so that my later post was placed before the earlier one, but there you are.)

"Turn backward, turn backward, O time in your flight;
  I've just thought of a wisecrack fix I needed last night!"

—original from Louis Safian's big book of insults, ca. 1970. 🙂

[Peter Kahrel]

All open documents can be closed by this one-line script:

app.documenets.everyItem.close (SaveOptions.YES);

This  saves the documents before they're closed. If that's not needed, change YES to NO.

You can apply a keyboard shortcut to run it quickly.

A dialog could be added to the script and the script could be hooked to InDesign's Exit  to get the functionality you wanted, but keeping it as a 'normal' script is easier.