Unlinking Text Boxes in InDesign CS5.5
The Split Story Script among other hidden gems.
This is how you find the Scripts Panel
During one of my recent projects for Creating WE I set up a document with linking text boxes. Well, as the project progressed, the text in the boxes changed from body text to headline text and then into image captions. At that point, it no longer made sense to have all the text boxes linked together, because as I was editing the text it was needlessly jumping from one text box to the next across pages. I needed a way to break all the text box links apart without disturbing the layout or having to recreate the boxes.
The solution was simple, a pre-installed script:
- Open your Scripts panel (Window> Utilities >Scripts)
- Look down the folder tree until you find Split Story (Application > Samples > SplitStory.jsx)
- Place your cursor in one frame of the linked story that you want to unlink
- Double-click the script name in the panel.
- InDesign will run the script and all the frames of the story will be "unlinked" without disturbing the layout of the content.