Maximum number of conditional tags in an InDesign doc?

[Nedlaw]

A client is experimenting (or I'm experimenting on behalf of a client) on generating multiple versions of a document from a single source InDesign book. We have gone through a proof-of-concept, and they are convinced that conditional tags will produce the effect they're after. Originally, they specified 12 different tags (4 audiences, 3 levels of reader). All went surprisingly well. They were happy.

Now they have approached me to do a substantially larger document with 32 different tags. And they may want many more tags in the future in this single-source document to produce different flavors of output.

Many.

Setting aside for a moment that there may be another way to accomplish the end result (multiple output document versions sourced from a single document text maintained in one place), the questions are:

• What is the maximum number of conditional tags that an InDesign document can support? 64? 128? 1024...? Is it memory-dependent? It would be better to be able to ease my collar and say early, "we can't do that because of a program limitation, and must take another path."
• Even if a document could support 1024 tags (for instance -- and if it were humanly possible to apply them), would InDesign run out of memory on my 24Gb machine trying to render versions of all these documents?

Someone will undoubtedly tell me to experiment and get back to the forum, and I will end up doing just that... but if anyone knows (or suspects) up front, it would save a lot of time and frustration and result in a happier client not to go down a doomed path.

Thanks.

-jw

[FRIdNGE · Accepted solution]

Hi,

If you talk about "Conditions", I'm just creating 10,000 conditions in a doc!

.........................................

Just For Fun!    [of course, not manually, with just 1 click! … I'm too lazy!]

Best,

Michel, for FRIdNGE

[Nedlaw]

Well, you've certainly answered the question of whether 10,000 conditions can be created, so THAT's not a maximum. Thanks. Whether 10,000 (or 100) conditions are usable is another question, and I'll have to find that out the hard way.

Thanks.