6 Replies Latest reply: Aug 16, 2010 11:16 PM by JayNewWeb RSS

    Spell-check improvements over CS3

    JayNewWeb Community Member

      I do limited work with InDesign. I create business presentations for my company in it, for marketing and fund-raising. I've been using CS3 for a few years and it does all that I need. I haven't seen anything in CS5 that matters to me based on reviewing the Adobe products site.

       

      The one thing that does matter enormously to me, though, is the fact that the spell-checker in CS3 is truly atrocious. In addition to having a list of suggestions that are so small I need a microscope, it fails to flag me when I accidentally ended a sentence with a comma, it fails to flag me when I accidentally have extra spaces between words...

       

      And I can go on.

       

      Can someone please tell me if the spell-checker in CS5 has these things fixed?

       

      And/or, better yet, even if I do go to CS5, can someone please tell me a practical way to export "all" the text in one shot to a text file or Word doc so I can use Word to do the spell-check since it's probably a lot more robust than even what CS5 might have (grammar checking too)? Unless CS5 is "that" good.

       

      Thanks very much.

       

      Jay

        • 1. Re: Spell-check improvements over CS3
          [Jongware] Community Member

          A spell-checker checks spelling, not spaces or comma's. That's not in CS5 either (I think the spell-check has not changed; or, possibly, it may perform just a bit worse than it used to be, according to a few questions on this forum).

           

          You can easily export your ID text to Word by clicking the text cursor into any story and export that to RTF (which Word can read), or, if you are no supporter of logically threaded text boxes, use the standard supplied script ExportAllStories, which will put *all* of your text -- although putting it back poses a problem -- there are workarounds for that as well. It depends on your workflow. Personally, I'd not try to use ID as a glorified word processor but instead make sure the text is checked and all before I place it into ID.

           

          If you know in advance what kind of mistakes you might have made, you can make good use of GREP styles to highlight these common errors.

          • 2. Re: Spell-check improvements over CS3
            JayNewWeb Community Member

            Thanks. That's hugely helpful.

             

            I tend to edit in ID regardless of what I've done in advance in Word, though maybe I should rethink that and do more preparatory semi-final work in Word.

             

            That script to export "all" text seems ideal for my purposes. I don't need to be able to re-import it. I can put ID side-by-side with Word on my 24" screen, at which point I have no problem letting Word "show" me what needs fixing while I manually fix it in ID.

             

            It's not ideal but it seems like my best approach and it's not that bad.

             

            Thanks again.

             

            Jay

            • 3. Re: Spell-check improvements over CS3
              Joel Cherney Community Member

              That script to export "all" text seems ideal for my purposes. I don't need to be able to re-import it. I can put ID side-by-side with Word on my 24" screen, at which point I have no problem letting Word "show" me what needs fixing while I manually fix it in ID.

               

              It's not ideal but it seems like my best approach and it's not that bad.

              Whatever works for you. I much prefer threading every single frame into one gigantic story. That way, I get all of the text in logical order. Because my InDesign docs are styled within an inch of their lives, I can just Place the edited RTF, Clear Overrides, and be left with really minimal tweaking. But I'm not making the edits myself, and I don't always read the language I'm working on, so I would never trust myself to catch all of the Burmese edits and implement them correctly. If you're working with your own text, in your own language, then the visual matching method might work just fine.

              • 4. Re: Spell-check improvements over CS3
                JayNewWeb Community Member

                Can you please help me find the "standard script ExportAllStories" in ID CS3?

                 

                I can't find it and a search on Help turned up nothing on it.

                 

                Thanks again.

                 

                Jay

                • 5. Re: Spell-check improvements over CS3
                  P Spier CommunityMVP

                  It's in the sample scripts that ship with ID. Can't recall if they got installed by default in CS3, but I think so. Try Window > Automation > Scripts then look in the Application/Sample Scripts/Javascript section.

                  • 6. Re: Spell-check improvements over CS3
                    JayNewWeb Community Member

                    P Spier wrote:

                     

                    Try Window > Automation > Scripts then look in the Application/Sample Scripts/Javascript section.

                     

                    Yes, that did it. I exported as RTF. I ended up with 40 separate files (40 stories). So, to get it all into one Word doc, the next step I employed was:

                     

                    Open a new Word doc (Word 2007) > Insert > Object > Text from File... and select "all" of the RTF files that were exported (all 40).

                     

                    That worked like a charm. Running spell-check on that was a piece of cake, as was correcting the errors in InDesign manually as it flagged them.

                     

                    (It has to be RTF. Using TXT would require I tell it how to interpret each file individually as it attempts to import it.)

                    Thanks again!

                     

                    Jay