InDesign VBScript to apply Drop Shadows

[chrisnaylor]

Does anyone know how to write an InDesign VBScript to apply Drop Shadows?

I have tried various things, such as:

with myParagraphStyle
              .appliedfont = TitlePageFont
              .TransparencySetting.DropShadowSettings.Mode = Drop
end With

and:

myTextFrame.ParentStory.Texts.Item(1).ContentTransparencySetting.DropShadowSettings.Mode = Drop

and many variants on these - all without success.

I just can't seem to get the object model right.

Any suggestions would be gratefully appreciated.

[Peru Bob]

I've moved this from the Using the Community forum (which is the forum for issues using the forums) to the InDesign forum so that proper help can be offered.

[rob day · Accepted solution]

Hi @chrisnaylor , I can‘t help you with VB, but with JavaScript you don’t apply the drop shadow affect directly to a text object, it’s applied to a page item or text frame like this where the selection is a text frame and the drop shadow is applied to the contentTransparency (the text):

//a selected text frame
var s = app.activeDocument.selection[0];
//apply a dropshadow to the frame’s text content
s.contentTransparencySettings.dropShadowSettings.mode = ShadowMode.DROP;

[chrisnaylor]

Many thanks for your posting - that was brilliant!

You have solved the problem.

For the record, the VBScript I used now looks like this:

rem Add Drop Shadow:
myTextFrame.ContentTransparencySettings.DropShadowSettings.Mode = idShadowMode.idDrop

That works fine  although it looks as if it isn't readily possible to apply the drop shadow selectively to items within the text frame, it seems to apply to all items in the text frame or none of them. Unless, of course, I'm missing something?