Is there a way to generate live captions with multiple metadata tags on one line?

[Scott Falkner]

I need to generate captions for a list of about 400 images. Each image is in a folder depending on its category. I want to generate captions containing the category (Folder 0) and filename (Name). They would look like this…

As far as I can tell, if I want to use more than one metadata tag in a caption I have to put each tag on its own line. That means the captions look like this…

That means I can't use live captions. I have to generate static captions then use Find/Change to fix the breaks. Is there another way, preferably one that lets me use live captions which I can put on the parent page?

[Eugene Tyson]

You can use Text Variables to insert Metadata Captions - I think the text frame just needs to touch off the element to capture the data.

And then you can put multiple captions on the same line.

[Scott Falkner]

What I want is to setup live captions so that, when I select an image and apply live captions the caption is created as I want it. At the moment it's not a big deal to use Find/Change to remove the paragraph break between lines, but I was hoping I had overlooked a way to skip that step as it seems like a basic feature. Think of the photo captions you see in newspapers and magazines giving credit to the photographer and the copyright year. I would have expected that to be something that could be applied with one command. Seems not.

[Eugene Tyson]

I see -  now I get what you want here - my bad.

I can sorta do it 

I set the Text Frame Options to 2 with gutter of 0

with nothing selected so it became the default for text frames.

Then genereated the caption and got this

You can do something similar with Paragraph Style - using Split into Columns 

But it gives the same result

I tried making the Object Style being default for Text Frames -but it doesn't stick and you have to clear the overrides. 

- Guess it's a feature request so.

[Scott Falkner]

That’s an interesting idea. I’m not married to the idea of a triangle bullet between the folder and filename. I’ll think about it. Thanks.

[Lut @ HOTEL KONFETTI]

Interesting solution indeed! If Scott includes the Span Column options (> Split Column 2) in the Paragraph Style (he uses in the caption setup), he doesn't need an Object Style, right? You can't make an Object Style the 'default' but this Place Gun Frame trick is cool: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgNn8N5OI3I

[Eugene Tyson]

Yeh I couldn't force it to apply to a text frame.

I also had autonsize selected and that works but not automatically, you have to make a slight change or override the style for it to kick in.

But I can't get that autosize to autosize by itself on generation.

[Lut @ HOTEL KONFETTI]

Oh now I see what you mean ... I noticed that the Place Gun Frame Object Style (applied to new text frames / T) doesn't seem to work on the live / static captions ... Being able to define 'Object Styles' in the Caption Setup sounds like a good feature request to me!