- Open the InDesign document you wish to export text from.
- Select the ‘API – Text Exporter – Export With Dialog…’ menu item.
- A “Text Export Options” dialog should come up. Select the text gathering method you want (see the text gathering section below for more details).
- Select the page range you want to export text from.
- Click ‘OK’ to start the export. After a little while, a file-save dialog will appear, so you can select the location of the exported text. Choose a destination folder and a filename and click ‘OK’.
Text Gathering and Reading Order:
This plug-in supports two methods of text gathering:
- Horizontal, then vertical (letter gathering order)
- Vertical, then horizontal (newspaper columnar gathering order)
Additionally, you can also define the reading order as left-to-right (most European languages) or right-to-left (Hebrew, Arabic,…)
The first method ‘Horizontal, then vertical’ will sort all text frames you wish to export text from in terms of their position relative to the top of the page. The text frame that is closest to the top will be exported first and the one closest to the bottom will be exported last. If two or more text frames are at the same distance from the top, then the text frame that is earlier in the natural reading order of the page will be exported first.
The second method ‘Vertical, then horizontal’ will sort all text frames you wish to export text from in terms of their horizontal reading order. The text frame that is first in the natural reading order will be exported first. If two or more text frames are at the same horizontal reading order position, then the text frame that is closest to the top of the page will be exported first and then the second closest and so on.
By default, with a Text Ordering setting of Story By Story, the text gathering method will be temporarily ignored when the plug-in encounters a text frame that is part of a sequence of text frames linked to a story. The plug-in will find all the linked text frames on the page or document (depending which type of export you chose) and sort them consecutively in story order regardless of their position on the page or document. Then the plug-in will resume the normal text gathering method.
Text Ordering:
By default, TextExporter will export story by story – so if a long story has been scattered over many text frames, the story will be exported as a whole when the first text frame is encountered in the gathering and reading order. If additional text frames of the same story are encountered during gathering and reading, they are ignored.
If you have a licensed version of APID ToolAssistant installed, you can also choose to export frame by frame Stories that are scattered over many text frames are then exported as separate ‘chunks’ – one chunk for each text frame. Depending on the document at hand, the visual appearance of the exported RTF will be a little closer to the original than when exporting story by story.
Force All Text To Black:
By default, text is exported in the same color as used in the InDesign document – so any white text is exported as white text in the RTF file. That might mean that some text that is clearly visible in InDesign (because it is white, but positioned above a dark backdrop), becomes invisible in RTF (as it will be shown white on white). The Force All Text To Black option ignores any text color and exports all text as black.
Emulate Bullets:
TextExporter relies on the built-in RTF export functionality provided by InDesign. This export does not handle text formatted with a bulleted or numbered paragraph style as supported by InDesign CS2 or higher. The bullets disappear from the exported text because they’re part of the style – they are not part of the exported text.
By enabling this function, the exported text will include the missing bullet characters.
WARNING: this option will modify the original document and convert all style-based bullets and numbering in the document text to explicit bullets prior to export. When closing the original InDesign document, you don’t want to save changes.
Export Anchored Frames:
With this option, TextExporter will look for text inside of anchored frames, and it will insert any text it finds into the main text. To set the inserted text apart, it will be prefixed and suffixed with some configurable marker – by default « and » (« is LEFT-POINTING DOUBLE ANGLE QUOTATION MARK + U00AB. » is RIGHT-POINTING DOUBLE ANGLE QUOTATION MARK, +U00BB).
Export Footnotes:
With this option, TextExporter will insert any footnote text it finds into the main text. To set the inserted text apart, it will be prefixed and suffixed with some configurable marker – by default ‹ and › (‹ is SINGLE LEFT-POINTING ANGLE QUOTATION MARK + U2039. › is SINGLE RIGHT-POINTING ANGLE QUOTATION MARK, +U203A)
Ignore Stories on Master Pages:
Uncheck this option to export master page stories.
Ignore Stories on Pasteboard:
Uncheck this option to export stories on the pasteboard.
Ignore Invisible Stories:
Check this option to exclude stories that are fully contained on an invisible layer. Remark: as soon as one or more frames of a story are on a visible layer, the story will be exported, even if the bulk of its text frames is invisible.
Ignore Stories With Less than # Characters:
Check this option to exclude stories with less than a certain number of characters.
Export As:
Supported file formats:
- Rich Text Format (RTF)
- InDesign Tagged Text
- Text
Additional options :
You can pre-define export options via the ‘API – Text Exporter – Default Export Settings…’ menu item.
This will make a “‘Text Exporter’ Default Settings” dialog appear. Any settings you define here will serve as default settings for subsequent exports.
If you want to export text from a document using these default settings, you can also choose the ‘API – Text Exporter – Export’ menu item – this will export the text without any further ado. It will use a filename based on your document’s name, but with a .rtf or .txt file name extension.
Be careful when using this option – any existing .rtf or .txt file with the same name will be overwritten without further warning.
Finally, if you need to batch-process many InDesign files, you could create an AppleScript or VBScript or ExtendScript to open/export/close these documents. In the subfolder ‘Automation’ are some short sample scripts that demonstrate how to call the Text Exporter ‘Export’ function from a script.
Limitations
Occasionally, certain documents will cause InDesign to crash, most commonly due to slight document corruptions that don’t surface during normal use. The following FAQ entry has some more info on how to work around these issues.
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