Clearing character style overrides when deleting styles in Indesign using Applescript

Question

I'm converting 400+ documents to a new layout format.

I'm trying to delete a character style and remove the formatting for it. (AKA, delete a character style with the checkbox checked).

Here's my code:

delete character style "Exhibit Number" of character style group "Exhibit Styles" 
replacing with character style "[None]"

It works to delete the character style, but it doesn't remove the formatting. Random stabs in the dark, like appending without formatting, without Preserve Formatting, without Overrides, and with "Preserve Formatting" = false triggers an error.

Is there a way of doing this via script? (Can I do with properties{None}, by setting a preference to not preserve overrides, or some variation therein?)

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited Feb 03 '16 at 23:54

1

"[None]" is not a character style per say. It's more of a link to style breaker. So any of the overrides are not removed. A solution would be to create a dummy "None" character style based on [None] and then eventually ste to [None] character style.

In JavaScript this would be:

//Removing overrides
text.clearOverrides();
//Setting to dummy None
text.appliedCharacterStyle = app.activeDocument.characterStyles.item("My Dummy Sans");
//Now breaking link to a character style i.e. applying "[None]";
text.appliedCharacterStyle = app.activeDocument.characterStyles[0];

edited Feb 03 '16 at 23:54

Jongware

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answered Feb 03 '16 at 17:17

Loic

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I implemented a version of this using Applescript, and solved the issue. I didn't know [None] didn't behave like normal styles. – ElectricCharlie Feb 03 '16 at 18:08

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:28

As Loic pointed out, the issue stemmed from expecting [None] to behave as a normal style.

The following Applescript fixed the issue:

try
    set charstyle to make character style with properties {name:"TempCharStyle"}
    delete character style "Exhibit Number" of character style group "Exhibit Styles" replacing with character style "TempCharStyle"
    delete character style "TempCharStyle"
end try

Clearing character style overrides when deleting styles in Indesign using Applescript

2 Answers2