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Resize document with everything in it eg font size, leading, etc

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
March 9, 2023
7 replies
10253 views

I’d like to know if there’s an easy way to scale up / down a document while automatically changing all the Paragraph Styles to match.

I basically want to achieve the effect as if I have placed an Indesign document into another InDesign document, but to do this natively within the doc. Another way to think about it would be how resizing an image would work in Photoshop — everything is resized.

I’m gonna assume that this is likely not possible natively (why not - adobe?) So I’m posting this question here hoping that someone would know a script that might do this.

We need better ways to find InDesign scripts — please let me know also if you know of some type of index somewhere. Thanks!

Important notes: (here added because of comments below)

Please do not suggest to place an InDesign doc inside another InDesign doc, or output the PDF. The point of all this is not about the workarounds, nor is it about how to output a doc in a specific size. I am interested in the INPUT — ie. the source doc. I just would like to scale the doucment at a source document level. What most of the answers suggest are purely about output. I’m not interested in that.

I understand that you may make assumption that I’m interested in the output and that I shouldn’t have any reasons to scale up/down the document, but it’s mostly a matter of “head space”. This is really hard to explain but let’s just say that I prefer working with type size at 72pt instead of 144pt. Is it strange to want to work like that? Is it unecesasry? You can say that but I would also like to see if it’s possible. It’s not the end of the day if I couldn’t achieve what I wanted.

Further notes:

I would love to find a script that could auto-update paragraph styles if it detects that the document contains updated styles that could be redefined. I feel that this should do what I needed. Before starting to go about writing such script, I want to check that there isn’t such script already available.

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer TᴀW

My (not free) QuickResize script does exactly what you need: it scales an entire InDesign document and everything in it to whatever size or percentage needed. (It intentionally emulates the old Photoshop resize dialog.)

Obviously, if the resizing is not proportional, things will get squished.

If the resizing is proportional, the result is usually flawless.

Paragraph styles will get the + thing to show they're overriden, though.

There's a demo as well, so try it out: QuickResize - Id-Extras.com

TᴀWCorrect answer

Legend

My (not free) QuickResize script does exactly what you need: it scales an entire InDesign document and everything in it to whatever size or percentage needed. (It intentionally emulates the old Photoshop resize dialog.)

Obviously, if the resizing is not proportional, things will get squished.

If the resizing is proportional, the result is usually flawless.

Paragraph styles will get the + thing to show they're overriden, though.

There's a demo as well, so try it out: QuickResize - Id-Extras.com

avid_judge0D4DAuthor

Known Participant

This is great — thanks for posting an answer that actually will work. I’ll check out a demo and decide if I will buy it.

// SML @seeminglee

Marc Autret

Legend

Hi @avid_judge0D4D

TotalRescale does not exactly answers your question but the script provides some ideas that may help.

Best,

Marc

m1b

Community Expert

Fascinating technique and article, Marc!

Willi Adelberger

Community Expert

Place an INDD in a larger INDD file.

Peter Spier

Community Expert

That was suggested three days ago...

James Gifford—NitroPress

Legend

...and it's just an inversion of print-to-scale, really.

There are several paths to the end goal, but no good ones that actually resize the doc in native form.

m1b

Community Expert

Hi @avid_judge0D4D, I'll chime in from a scripting perspective. This is going to be hard I think. I wrote a quick script that makes a start and it quickly runs into some serious challenges. For example, I can scale the pages and the items on the pages—that seems to work okay—but when you transform a text frame is seems to scale the entire story; so if you have a thread with two text frames, the text gets scaled twice. There are ways around this, but it all adds considerable time and effort to the project. Or it probably wouldn't be an issue if there were no threaded text frames. Depends on specifics of your document(s).

Also, in general, this is the type of challenge that is prone to break in many edge cases, so would require a lot of testing.

- Mark

avid_judge0D4DAuthor

Known Participant

Thank you. What about a script to go through all the paragraph styles that got redefined and update the paragraph style definition automatically. This to me seems like a script with significantly more use cases, and I could possibly just perform a simple select-all + scale to get what I need.

// SML @seeminglee

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

Why are you insisting on editability?

You either need smaller / bigger end result of EXACTLY the same layout - or completely new layout.

Why can't you just edit original and export smaller / bigger version?

If you scale things up / down - you'll need to check all texts again as you'll have reflows.

You are mentioning 4K and FHD resolutions - are those slides or what?

What exactly are you working on and why do you need smaller / larger versions?

Anything - as long as it doesn't need A.I. - is doable 😉

Peter Spier

Community Expert

If all you want to do is scale a finished document, one easy method is to place the pages into a new file of the correct size.

You can use the script at https://github.com/mike-edel/ID-MultiPageImporter/releases (originally written by Scott Zanelli and now curated by Mike Edel) to do this. It has positioning and scale options.

James Gifford—NitroPress

Legend

There's also the very simple option of printing ~~(or exporting)~~ to a scaled output. But I can see the need to rescale an original/master doc directly, too.

Peter Spier

Community Expert

InDesign's print dialog presents scaling options, but for the life of me I've never found a way to export a scaled file. If you know something I don't I'd love to be educated.

Michael Bullo

Community Expert

The method I suggested above does work with text but it creates an override on Paragraph Styles. Overrides are identified by a "+" sign next to a style within the Paragraph Styles panel. If you right mouse click on such a style you can choose the option Redefine Style.

avid_judge0D4DAuthor

Known Participant

Noted — this is a good tip. I’m sure that if the adjust layout actually worked then it would be perfect. I will definitely keep this in mind.

// SML @seeminglee

Michael Bullo

Community Expert

Choose Adjust Layout from the File menu. Change the Page Size and don't forget to tick the Adjust Font Size option. Does that do what you want?

avid_judge0D4DAuthor

Known Participant

This works to a degree but the result is not perfect. It also ignores headers if they are not within the main text, and it ignores master pages margins. Instead treating the “document setup” options as what it would derive from.

I just tried it on an existing doc and it doesn’t do it correctly at all. Possibly hard to explain without screenshots but I would have to make a fresh doc for you to see as I can’t post the docs I’m working on (ha).

I have somewhat considered writing a script for this but I just thought that this MUST have been done already, right?!?!

// SML @seeminglee

Michael Bullo

Community Expert

Are you familiar with the Liquid Layout options? The panel is found under the Layout menu and you also want to be using the Page Tool.

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