Text anchors

[cwscarbrough]

I’m having trouble with a long document in InDesign. I suspect it’s because of a large number of text anchors that somehow were introcduced when a copyeditor imported a lengthy series of endnotes in Word. Now the INDD doc is sluggish, crashy and generally hard to handle.

Is there any way to find and replace these anchors? I can’t seem to find the right search string.

Thanks! CWS

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

This may be completely unrelated to the problem CWS has but when I open his sample InDesign file and look at the text in the story editor every line has, overlaid on the first character of the line, a symbol just like the InDesign page number icon. It's there in a newly created text frame in the same document but it disappears if I copy the frame to a new document . . . .   

By @Nick Passmore

Can you post a screenshot?

[Nick Passmore]

Here's a screenshot. However, this was opened in 17.4.2 (custom plugins, long story) when I open it in 19.3 the ☒ symbol is not there. Red herring but I'd be interested to know what if anything it signifies!

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@cwscarbrough 

My offer still stands - and now, that I have "access" to those blind anchors - I can remove them easily - leaving the good ones intact. 

FOC of course. 

[Robert at ID-Tasker · Accepted solution]

@cwscarbrough 

OK, I know what is "wrong" with your file...

Your text is linked as ICML - you've mentioned InCopy but I have Links pallet closed and I've ignored initial message about missing links:

I wasn't even able to search for the "endnote" numbers so I started digging and found out that this Story is linked.

After I've UNLINKED it - my script:

app.activeDocument.hyperlinkTextDestinations.everyItem().remove();

works perfectly fine on your sample.

Not sure if you can or should - but if you can or as you have this ICML file - you can run this script in InCopy.

But you need to be careful - it will remove ALL hyperlinkTextDestinations... so you might need more "targeted" - something that will check if destiation is dead and only then remove it.

[cwscarbrough]

Robert – thanks for your generous offer and your amazing hard work. The script cleared out the anchors. I’m very grateful. CWS

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

Robert – thanks for your generous offer and your amazing hard work. The script cleared out the anchors. I’m very grateful. CWS

By @cwscarbrough

Always happy to help. 

[cwscarbrough]

Robert – Thanks for your generous offer and for your amazing hard work. I’m very gratefuyl. CWS