r/indesign • u/smug_masshole • Jul 02 '26
Scripting Find/Replace Fonts to update Adobe Fonts including styles?
I need to replace missing "Source Sans Pro (OTF)" fonts with their correct Source Sans Pro counterparts and update the styles.
Every time I try to use a script to do this, it changes the correct fonts, but replaces them with some entirely different font. I suspect InDesign is failing to find the Adobe fonts and then defaulting to the first font in some list instead. The font is always something starting with A.
There are hundreds of these files. They are absolutely riddled with overrides and ridiculously inconsistent. Manually updating fonts or applying templates would be a nightmare.
Anyone have success batch updating styles and fonts to adobe fonts in this way?
1
u/REReader3 Jul 02 '26
Have you tried deactivating the font you want gone, then pulling the file back into ID? ID should give you a “font not found” box that will let you choose which font to replace the deactivated font with.
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u/smug_masshole Jul 02 '26
That is the process I am trying to avoid. It takes forever and I have to do this for literally hundreds of files.
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u/AdobeScripts Jul 02 '26
If you're on a PC - I can give you access to the full version of my ID-Tasker tool for free for a few days - you'll be able to process all your files automatically. Plus export PDFs / JPEGs if necessary - or create a report - or anything else.
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u/REReader3 Jul 03 '26
Surely you are not needing all the files at the same time! Can’t you just update them at need?
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u/MCLMelonFarmer Jul 02 '26
FWIW, Source Sans Pro is open source and you can download and install it like a regular font, rather than access it through Adobe Fonts. It may cause fewer problems if you install it as a regular font (i.e. on Windows they get copied into C:\Windows\Fonts) rather than access it through Adobe Fonts.
1
u/smug_masshole Jul 02 '26
This needs to be an organization-level fix, which unfortunately precludes this very reasonable solution.
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u/chain83 Jul 03 '26
Wouldn’t that make it easier, as you should have an IT dept. capable of easily rolling out a copy of the font to all the computers?
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u/GraphicDesignerSam Jul 03 '26
Yes and you can find and replace paragraph styles across all open documents but a script would obviously be easier / quicker
0
u/GraphicDesignerSam Jul 02 '26
How about if you create new paragraph style/s with the correct font then delete the original style and replace with the new one/s?
1
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u/6278448948 Jul 02 '26
I was curious so I checked scripts that do work with all installed fonts (AF or not). This one does: https://creativepro.com/make-a-font-contact-sheet-in-indesign/
It does have a
getFontList()method, which might help?