Find and Unlink Text Links [CS6] [JS]

[Danny_Noonan]

We are getting InDesign CS6 documents. Most of these documents have .txt files placed as links. Does anyone have a script that will check an open document for txt links and if one or  more exists, unlink them. This seems to work, but I don't know what else it is unlinking...

app.activeDocument.links.everyItem().unlink()

I don't really feel safe using this because other images or links I want to keep could be deleted with this. I would like to narrow it down to look for and unlink txt files only.

I'd really appreciate any help! Thanks in advance!

Danny

[Andreas Jansson · Accepted solution]

You could loop through all links, and check their names, something like this:

var link;
var linkName;
var links = app.activeDocument.links;
for (var i=links.length-1; i>=0; i--){
    link = links;
    linkName = link.name;
    if (link.name.substr(linkName.length-4) == '.txt'){
        link.unlink();
    }
}

[Laubender]

Hm.

I'd rather check for the parent object of a particular link.

If it's a Story object, it's safe to assume you have a linked text file.

var d=app.documents[0];
var allTheLinks = d.links;
for(var n=allTheLinks.length-1;n>=0;n--){
    var link = allTheLinks;
    if(link.parent.getElements()[0].constructor.name === "Story"){link.unlink()};
    };

The advantage is that you need not to look for every file extension or possible kind of file associated with a text file.

Uwe

[Danny_Noonan]

Both work perfect for what I need. Thanks for your help!