Script for exporting LAB Color swatch values to Excel (CSV)

Update: March 14 2024

I tried running the script from VScode, using Adobe ExtendScrip Plug-in installed.

The script returned nothing when ran against the current Adobe Illustrator document? Seems the the 

currentSwatch.space

property does not exist in Illustrator?

But the scrupt will run fine against an Adobe InDesign open document since InDesign natively "honors" CIE Lab color model as far as swatch names are concerned.

My LAB version above script can easily be changed into any color space. Here is one for CMYK. Just change the local result path, and import the resulting csv file into Excel, after running the script.

You can use Javascript which is used for platform independent scripting in InDesign.

// My LAB version script can easily be changed into any color space. CMYK.
var result = '';
for (var i = 0; i <= app.swatches.length-1; i++){	
	var currentSwatch = app.swatches[i];
	if (currentSwatch.hasOwnProperty('space') && currentSwatch.space == ColorSpace.CMYK){
		var val = currentSwatch.colorValue;
		result += i.toString() + ';' + currentSwatch.name + ';' + val[0] + ';' + val[1] + ';' + val[2] + ';' + val[3] +  '\r\n';
	}
}
result = 'N:o;Name;C;M;Y;K' + '\r\n' + result;
// var outPath = 'C:/temp/test/out.txt';  // Put an existing path here
var outPath = app.activeDocument.filePath.parent + '/' + 'out.txt';
var resultFilePath = writeToFile (result, outPath);
alert('File path: ' + resultFilePath);

function writeToFile(fileContents, destinationFilePath){
	var myFileOut = new File(destinationFilePath);
	myFileOut.open('w');
	// myFileOut.encoding = 'UTF-8';
	myFileOut.write(fileContents);
	myFileOut.close();
	return new File(destinationFilePath).fsName;
}

Hi @ColorDyeingMan2021 Save your csv named LabColors.csv to the desktop, and try this:

var path = File(Folder.desktop + "/LabColors.csv");
var cTable = readFile(path);
//split the table into an array of rows
var r = cTable.split("\n");

var doc = app.activeDocument;
var c, ns;

for (var i = 1; i < r.length-1; i++){
    //split the row into an array of cells
    c = r[i].split(",");
    ns = makeSwatch(doc, c[0]); 
    ns.model = ColorModel.PROCESS;
    ns.space = ColorSpace.LAB;
    ns.colorValue = [Number(c[1]),Number(c[2]),Number(c[3])]
};   


/**
* Read a text file 
* @param the file’s path 
* @return the file’s contents 
* 
*/

function readFile(p) {
	var f = new File(p);
	f.open("r");  
	var x = f.read();  
	f.close();
	return x; 
}


/**
* Makes a new swatch 
* @param the document to add the swatch to 
* @param swatch name 
* @return the new or existingswatch 
* 
*/
function makeSwatch(d, n){
    var s;
    try {
        d.colors.add({name:n});
    }catch(e) {
        s = d.colors.itemByName(n);
    } 
    return d.colors.itemByName(n);
}

Also, if the color channels are evenly incremented you wouldn’t need to load a spreadsheet—you should be able to increment the values in a loop