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rubinarts
Participant
October 27, 2023
Question

Export Location Changed

  • October 27, 2023
  • 3 replies
  • 244 views

For a few updates now, on both Mac and now Windows, I've noticed that whenever I export images or pdfs from InDesign, Illustrator or Photoshop, the default location is somehow set to the last location the program previously exported to instead of the last place that document exported to (it also no longer even exports back to the original location that say a flat image was opened from in Photoshop).

 

Ever since this change, in a company that's continuously expanding, it's becoming more and more ineffiecient having to back track to where the assets need to be exported to when returning to an older file instead of relying on what the program has always done by saving the document's last known export location, sometimes even causing files to be exported to very random locations and even getting lost if not paying attention.

 

Is there a setting I'm missing that can return to that?

3 replies

Mike Witherell
Community Expert
Community Expert
October 28, 2023

 

Don't know if this is made correctly, but I copied some bits of other scripts together to make this: it exports to an Interactive PDF and goes to the same folder as the document. I am only a beginner at scripting, so if any of you see an improvement, I would love to know about it. But it seems to work for me so far.

 

 

IDdoc = app.activeDocument;
if (IDdoc.saved){
thePath = String(IDdoc.fullName).replace(/\..+$/, "") + ".pdf";
thePath = String(new File(thePath).saveDlg());
}
else{
thePath = String((new File).saveDlg());
}
thePath = thePath.replace(/\.pdf$/, "");
name1 = thePath + ".pdf";
app.interactivePDFExportPreferences.properties = {
                    exportAsSinglePages: false,
                    exportLayers: true,
                    exportReaderSpreads: false,
                    flipPages: false,
                    flipPagesSpeed: 5,
                    generateThumbnails: true,
                    includeStructure: false,
                    interactivePDFInteractiveElementsOption: InteractivePDFInteractiveElementsOptions.INCLUDE_ALL_MEDIA,
                    openInFullScreen: false,
                    pageRange: PageRange.ALL_PAGES,
                    pageTransitionOverride: PageTransitionOverrideOptions.FROM_DOCUMENT,
                    pdfDisplayTitle: PdfDisplayTitleOptions.DISPLAY_FILE_NAME,
                    pdfJPEGQuality: PDFJPEGQualityOptions.HIGH,
                    pdfMagnification: PdfMagnificationOptions.DEFAULT_VALUE,
                    pdfPageLayout: PageLayoutOptions.DEFAULT_VALUE,
                    pdfRasterCompression: PDFRasterCompressionOptions.JPEG_COMPRESSION,
                    rasterResolution: 200,
                    usePDFStructureForTabOrder: false,
                    viewPDF: false
                };
IDdoc.exportFile(ExportFormat.INTERACTIVE_PDF, new File(name1), false,);

 

 

 

Mike Witherell
Steve Werner
Community Expert
Community Expert
October 28, 2023

I totally rely on Default Folder on a Macintosh for setting up which folders are used when, as @Mike Witherell mentioned. It's been very well supported over the past decade or two I've been using it.

 

https://stclairsoft.com/DefaultFolderX/

Mike Witherell
Community Expert
Community Expert
October 28, 2023

The only thing InDesign can do, which is limited, is Preferences > File Handling where you can choose whether to relink to Original Link Folder or Most Recent Relink Folder. 

I wish, along with you, that the application/andor/document could remember save and export locations particular to each document. 

Some people recommend this if on macOS:

https://stclairsoft.com/DefaultFolderX/

Mike Witherell