Here is an example page:
As you can see – there are a few URLs – some of them are in brackets.
Let’s start with getting list of those URLs:
Steps that this Tasks is performing:
First, it Activates TEXTS lists – for user’s convenience.
Then, Loads GREP Search results – in this case it’s quite a basic GREP expression, that will find and load all texts that start with “www” and end with “white space” – space, tab, enter, shift-enter, etc.
Then, there is another Load GREP Search results – which searches for any text that starts with “www” – but only looks for results in brackets – and EXCLUDING those brackets.
Then it sorts found results by CONTENTS columns.
Next step – will be described later.
So here is the end results – without the last step:
As you can see – 1st Load GREP brings us results with a closing bracket – which isn’t a correct result.
Annd here commes the last step in our task – it filters out results with closing bracket – here is Task run with all steps:
As you can see – there are no duplicates with closing bracket.
This shows how universal and powerful IDT is – you can either use a less detailed query and then filter out results – or you can use mutiple precise searches – before you process those results – instead of running multiple searches and process each one separately.
Now, that we have our list of URLs to process – let’s convert them into working Hyperlinks.
First, we need to select all of them for processing – right-click on the header of the first column:
Now we can run our Task – in BatchMode – forward or backward doesn’t matter:
There is only one rule / command Create URL Hyperlink – it’s a compound rule that can be either used in the ManualMode or in BatchMode. In this case, we want to convert found text into a Hyperlink – without any additional steps.
Here is the end result:
As you can see – duplicated addresses got extra numbers.
Now, let’s run this Task again – but first let’s modify it a bit:
As you can see – there is a new step – Apply CharStyle to Selection – and when the whole Task is run again – after removing all Hyperlinks:
The other great thing about IDT – you don’t have to run first Task again – all the found results remain active as IDT keeps references to them – even after deleting those Hyperlinks that has just been created – so as long as you don’t delete those texts in the InDesign – they’ll remain correct in IDT – and you can play with different forms of processing them.
What’s more – even if you would make some changes in the document – then performed UNDO – but not RESTORE – and brought back your document to the initial state – when search results were loaded – they’ll still remain valid.
OK, now let’s kick it up a notch.
New document:
Let’s say we need to make URL hyperlinks to texts in the first column – those “S-12345” – in the form “www.example.com/S-12345” – or it can be “www.example.com/?product=S-12345” or “www.example.com/product?id=S-12345” – or whatever form your website requires.
For a better visualisation – there are exactly the same codes – but on the Pasteboard:
But we don’t wan’t to process them, so, we need to add a filtering step:
This new step removes all results that are not in a Cell – based on the contents of the column “Parent Type”, “Hide everything else but CONTAIN” “Cell” text.
So far so good. We have our product codes. Now, let’s make working URLs.
We’ll need two extra steps:
First step – marks all the found and filtered results as selected for processing – in BatchMode IDT processes ONLY Visible & Selected rows.
Second step – which runs in kind of BatchMode on its own – copies value of the “Contents” column to “Extra 1” column and adds prefix “www.example.com/product?id=”.
Here is the end result:
Now we can use our earlier Task – with a slight modification:
This time – we want to use values from the Grid – “Selection / Grid” unchecked – and “URL in” = “Extra 1”.
After running this new Task on our found results – in BatchMode:
Yes, there are red dots in the Hyperlinks panel – because addresses are wrong – URL is incorrect for this website.
To sum up – with IDT – you can find ANYTHING – either using highly specific GREP / Text phrases or run a broad search and then filter out weeds.
Then, you can do pretty much anything with the results – even when they are just partially correct / incomplete.
Let’s kick kit up another notch.
Let’s say you wouldn’t have Character or Paragraph Styles applied – nor any distinctive formatting appliled to the texts – and there would be no pattern like in case of those codes – with IDT you can STILL find & load those texts.
You could load information from Tables:
This is the real structure of this file – there are 10x languages, but because only EN layer was visible – search result was returing only EN texts.
After some filtering – or simply by selecting TextFrame with a Table on EN layer – we can get this – this is the structure of this one Table – yes, there are Paragraph Styles applied – but that’s not a point:
Then, we can filter out only cells in 1st Column – right-click with Shift on the header of the “Column” column and selecting “1”:
Which gives us this:
But there is still contents of the first Cell – anchored icon – so we can just right-click on the cell with “1” in the “Row” column – and unselect “1”:
Now we can create and run a new Task – run it in BatchMode – but we are still in Tables tab:
And get this:
So now would be just a case of selecting all rows – right-click on the first column – then slight modification of earlier Tasks.
Or – as per the earlier screenshot with full contents of the Table – where Paragraph Styles where shown:
This Paragraph Style ccan be used to load those codes:
So, as you can see – with ID-Tasker – there is always MORE than one way to skin the proverbial cat 😀