Getting started
Two versions, the same features. Install whichever suits how you work.
The UXP plugin is part of InDesign: it opens like any other panel, docks with the rest, and runs on Windows and macOS. The AHK version is a separate program written in AutoHotkey. It runs in the background, brings its panel up with a keyboard shortcut from anywhere, and runs on Windows only.
The UXP plugin
- Install the plugin the way you install any Zalesky Workflow plugin.
- In InDesign, open File › Recent Files Manager, directly under Open Recent, or Window › Zalesky Workflow › Recent Files Manager.
- Dock it where you like. It remembers its size and every setting.
The panel fills itself the moment it opens. It does not wait, it does not ask, and it does not poll InDesign while you work.
The item in the File menu is put there by the plugin itself every time InDesign starts, so there is nothing extra to install.
The AHK version for Windows
- Put the program (the
.exe) anywhere you like, with its_DATAfolder beside it. - Run it. It sits quietly in the background.
- Press Ctrl + Win + Shift + R to bring the panel up, from anywhere.
The panel is on screen the moment you press the keys. A thin bar under the header and a count in the footer show the list being read; it takes a moment the first time, longer with documents on network drives. If the panel is behind another window, the same keys bring it to the front; pressed again, they hide it.
The window stays open until you close it, so you can leave it beside InDesign. If you would rather it got out of the way, switch on Close the panel after opening a document in Settings.
The two versions keep their own history in their own folder and never touch each other's. Running both costs nothing but disk space.
How the order is kept
Where the list comes from, and why the panel keeps one of its own.
A recent list is only worth having if it is in the order you last touched things. InDesign's own File › Open Recent reorders the moment a document is opened, saved or not, so that is where the panel takes its order from.
What the panel adds is memory and detail. The menu is readable only while InDesign is running, it holds a fixed handful of entries, and it gives you a name and nothing else — no folder, no version, no page.
Three sources
There are three places InDesign keeps this information, and none of them is enough on its own.
| Source | Holds | Problem |
|---|---|---|
| The registry | Full paths, with a timestamp for each | The timestamp is written on save, never on open |
| InDesign SavedData | The real order, opens included | InDesign keeps the file locked while it runs |
| File › Open Recent | The live order, the instant a file is opened | The labels are shortened, often to a bare file name |
So the panel takes the order from the menu and the paths from the registry, and writes the result into a history of its own. That history is why the list is right the moment the panel opens, with InDesign running or not, and why it remembers files the menu pushed off the end long ago.
The panel
A header, the list, the page beside it, and a footer that counts.
The header
The title, then a search box that filters on the file name and the folder together, then the view icons, refresh and settings. Typing in the search box filters as you type; Esc empties it.
The footer
How many documents the list holds, how many unsaved documents are open, and a key to the colours. It doubles as the panel's one line of feedback: when something happens, or fails to, it is said here.
Beside Open there is also a Show page previews box, which turns the page beside the list on and off without a trip to Settings. It is only that page: the page-previews view shows its pictures whatever the box says, and the previews already built are kept.
The colour marks
Four of them, and each answers a question you would otherwise have to go and check.
- Green, on the left edge. This document is open in InDesign right now. Opening it again would only bring its window forward, so the mark saves you from wondering whether you already have it.
- Red, on the left edge. The file is not where it was. It was moved, renamed, deleted, or it lives on a drive that is not reachable from here. The whole row is greyed out with it.
- Amber, a small square after the mark. The row is pinned to the top of the list and stays there whatever the sort says.
- Violet at the left edge. Somebody else has this document open on another computer; the tooltip says since when. Shown only when it is switched on in Settings.
A missing file is greyed out rather than dropped, on purpose: a row you can see and cannot open tells you something is wrong, where a row that quietly vanished tells you nothing at all. If you would rather not see them, there is Leave out documents that are no longer there in Settings.
While a document is open, InDesign holds a small lock file beside it
(.idlk). The panel finds it and checks whether InDesign really
holds it. A lock left behind by a crashed InDesign is held by nobody, so
it is ignored. The check runs every time the list is read, and then as
often as you set.
The one case nobody can tell is a colleague whose whole computer crashed or lost the network: the server keeps their files locked for a few more minutes, and the document looks open until then. It clears itself.
Touching a file on a share that is not answering costs about thirty seconds of nothing happening. Both versions time such a look out and mark the row as unreachable rather than sit there.
Two views
A list to read, or pages to recognise.
List
One row per document with the columns you asked for. This is the view for finding something by name, by folder, or by when you last had it open.
Page previews
A grid of first pages. Useful when you know what the document looked like and not what it was called.
The two icons in the header switch between them, and so do List and Page previews in the panel menu. Which one the panel starts in is a setting of its own.
The preview pane
In list view there is a page beside the list showing the selected document. Where the document has more than one page stored, ← and → step through them. Turn the pane off in the panel menu if you would rather have the width for columns.
Opening
Four ways, all of them one gesture.
| Do this | And |
|---|---|
| Double click a row | Opens it |
| Enter | Opens whatever is selected |
| The Open button | Opens the selection, however many rows it is |
| Ctrl and any of the above | Opens a copy instead |
Opening a copy
A copy comes up as an untitled document with the same content, so the file on disk cannot be overwritten by accident. That is what the command is for: going back to a document a month later to reuse it, without the risk of saving over the original.
Rows with no path
Once in a while InDesign shortens a menu label so far that nothing on disk can be matched back to it. The panel still shows the row, thin, with no folder and no version — and it still opens, because InDesign's own menu item does the opening. A miss is never a dead row.
Placing and dragging
An InDesign document can be placed into another one as a graphic. This is how.
Place in the active document on the right mouse button loads InDesign's cursor with the document. Nothing lands anywhere yet: the next click in the layout is what places it, so you choose where it goes and how big it is. Select several documents and they all go into the same loaded cursor, one click each.
Dragging
Press a row and drag out of the panel. The cursor is loaded the moment you leave, and you click in the document to put it down.
In the AHK version you carry the row over the InDesign window and let go there; that loads the cursor the same way. Hold Ctrl as you let go and the document is opened instead.
A press that never moves does nothing, and a drag released inside the panel does nothing, so ordinary clicking and selecting are unaffected.
The right mouse button
Everything except Open lives here.
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
| Open | Opens the document |
| Open a copy | Opens an untitled copy, leaving the file on disk alone |
| Place in the active document | Loads the cursor; the next click places it |
| Reveal in the file browser | Opens the containing folder |
| Copy path | The full path to the clipboard, one line per selected row |
| Pin to the top / Unpin | Holds the row at the top of the list |
| Render a preview with InDesign | For documents that carry no preview of their own |
| Remove from the list | Takes the row out until the file is opened again |
A command that cannot apply to the row is greyed out rather than hidden, so
the menu is the same shape every time you open it. The AHK version adds
Open with, listing the other applications on the machine that will
take an .indd.
Pinning and removing
Two ways of saying "this one matters" and "not this one".
Pin to the top
A pinned row is lifted above everything else whatever the sort says, and marked amber. Pin the job you are living in this week and stop hunting for it. Pinning several keeps them in the order the sort gave them, among themselves. The same command reads Unpin on a row that is already pinned.
Remove from the list
Del, or Remove from the list. It takes the row out of sight without touching the file. It is not a delete and it is not permanent: the next time InDesign reports that document as opened, it comes straight back. Think of it as "not now" rather than "never".
Del only removes a row when the search box is empty. With text in it, Delete is an ordinary editing key.
Columns and sorting
Five columns beside the name, all of them optional.
| Column | Shows |
|---|---|
| Folder | Where the file lives, shortened from the left when it has to be |
| Opened | When you last opened it — the column the panel is built around |
| Last saved | The file's own timestamp on disk |
| InDesign version | Which version wrote the file, read from its header |
| File size | How big it is |
Sorting
Click a heading to sort by it. Click it again to turn the sort around. The arrow in the heading says which way. Pinned rows stay on top regardless.
Widths
Drag the line at the right edge of a heading. The column and every cell under it follow the pointer, and the width is remembered.
In the plugin every column has a width of its own, Name included, and dragging right always widens the column you took hold of. When the columns add up to more than the panel, the list scrolls sideways and the headings go with it. The folder shows as much of the path as its column has room for; what does not fit goes from the beginning, a folder at a time, so widening the column brings the whole path back.
In the AHK version Name takes whatever the others leave, so the line at its right edge resizes the column after it.
The version column
Reading which InDesign wrote a document costs forty bytes out of its header, which is almost free on a local disk and one reach per document over a slow share. If a share is making the panel sluggish, switching the column off is the first thing to try. The AHK version offers a slower, more thorough read as well, which falls back to the document's XMP when the header is not conclusive.
Page previews
Where the pictures come from, and what to do when there are none.
Most .indd files carry a JPEG of their first page — or of every
spread — inside them. The panel pulls those straight out of the file. No
InDesign involved, nothing opened, instant.
Not every document has one. Always Save Preview Images with Documents is off in InDesign by default, so the older the file the likelier it is to have nothing to show. For those there is Render a preview with InDesign on the right mouse button: it opens the document with no window, exports page one, closes it again without saving, and caches the result. It costs real seconds on a large document, which is why it is asked for rather than done to everything.
Building them all at once
The panel only fetches the previews it is about to draw, which is why switching to page previews fills the grid in front of you rather than all at once. Build all page previews in the panel menu does the whole list ahead of time. The same button is in Settings, under Page previews, in both versions.
It works through one document at a time in the background, so the panel stays usable while it runs and the footer counts it out. Asking again stops it, and everything built so far is kept. The results are cached on disk, so the next time you open the panel they are already there.
In page-previews view the AHK version asks Explorer first. Windows has usually cached that thumbnail already, so the grid fills instantly, and the panel only reaches into the file itself for the ones Explorer does not have.
Settings
Everything the panel remembers, in one window.
Panel
| Colours | Follow InDesign, or pick a brightness. The AHK version has dark and light. |
| Open the panel in | List or page previews. Only where it starts; the header switches it any time. |
| Panel size | Your own zoom, on top of whatever the screen is doing. The AHK version offers 80, 100, 120 and 140 %. |
| Keep at most | How many documents the list holds. Default 80. |
| Show tooltips | The full path and the details on hover |
| Close after opening | AHK version only. Gets the panel out of the way once it has done its job. |
Every row costs a look at the disk and a read of the file header. Eighty is a fortnight of work for most people and opens in a moment. Raising it later loses nothing: the panel's history keeps every document it has ever seen, so the extra rows are there waiting.
Columns
Which of the five columns are shown. The widths are set by dragging.
Files
| Read which InDesign saved each document | The version column. Forty bytes from the file header. |
| Leave out documents that are no longer there | Off by default: a greyed out row says something is wrong, a missing one says nothing at all |
| Look at documents on network drives | AHK version only. Turn it off and shares are never touched. |
| Show documents open on another computer | A violet mark on documents somebody else has open. Off by default. |
| Check every | How often to look, in seconds, while the panel is open. 60 by default, 15 at least. |
Page previews
The Build all page previews button, and a size ceiling. The page beside the list is switched on and off with the Show page previews box in the footer. Where the panel can read part of a file the ceiling rarely bites; where it has to read a whole document to find the preview, a large one is skipped rather than pulled into memory.
Keyboard
The panel is usable without the mouse, and faster with it.
| Key | What it does |
|---|---|
| Ctrl Win Shift R | AHK version only. Brings the panel up from anywhere, or to the front if it is behind another window. Pressed again, hides it. |
| ↑ ↓ | Move through the list |
| Shift ↑ ↓ | Extend the selection |
| PgUp PgDn | A screenful at a time |
| ← → | Step through the pages in the preview. In grid view, move sideways. |
| Enter | Open |
| Ctrl Enter | Open a copy |
| Ctrl A | Select every row |
| Ctrl C | Copy the paths |
| Del | Remove from the list, when the search box is empty |
| F5 | Refresh |
| Esc | Empty the search box, then close the panel |
In the AHK version these work only while the panel is up and it has the focus, so none of them is in the way of anything else on the machine. The wheel needs no focus at all, only the pointer over the list.
Where the data lives
Two small files and a cache. Nothing is written anywhere near your documents.
The UXP plugin
- prefs.json
- Every setting, the sort order and the column widths
- history.json
- The recent list itself: path, opening time, version, pins, removals
- thumbs/
- Page previews pulled out of the documents
- panel.log
- What the panel asked InDesign and what came back
Open data folder in the panel menu takes you there.
The AHK version
- _DATA\settings_v2.ini
- Every setting, the window size and the column widths
- _DATA\history_v2.tsv
- The recent list, one line per document
- _DATA\jsx\
- The scripts InDesign is asked to run. These must travel with the .exe.
- _DATA\cache\
- Only fills when you use Render a preview with InDesign
If the folder the program sits in cannot be written to — a read-only share,
say — the data folder moves to %APPDATA%\InDesignRecentFiles
instead.
The two versions
The same features in two forms. What differs and why.
| UXP plugin | AHK version | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Part of InDesign, a panel among the others | A separate program with its own window |
| Opened by | File › Recent Files Manager, or Window › Zalesky Workflow | Ctrl + Win + Shift + R |
| System | Windows and macOS | Windows |
| Open with | — | Yes |
| Thumbnails | Out of the file | Explorer's cache first |
| Themes | Follows InDesign | Dark and light |
| Version read | Header | Header, or header then XMP |
The ordering, the history, the marks, the pins and the commands are the same in both. Where one version has something the other does not, it is because the surroundings allow it, not because one is the poor relation.
Trial and licence
Fourteen days of everything, then a key - one key for both versions.
The plugin runs as a full trial for 14 days from the first time the panel opens. The footer counts the days down; click it, or open Licence... in the panel menu, to see where you stand.
After the trial, everything that only shows you something keeps working: the list, search, sorting, the columns, the page beside the list, Reveal, Copy path, pinning and removing rows, and Settings. Opening documents (and copies of them), placing them and building previews need a licence.
Buying and activating
- In Licence..., press Buy the full version. The purchase page opens in your browser.
- After paying, the licence key is in your receipt and in your Gumroad library.
- Paste the whole key into Licence... and press Activate. The key is checked with Gumroad over the internet, and the answer appears in the same window.
The trial and the full version are the same plugin - there is nothing else to download. On another computer, install the same plugin and paste the same key.
Once confirmed, the licence works without internet for 30 days at a time. The plugin checks it again about once a day when it can, so normally you never notice. A refunded purchase stops working at the next check.
The AHK version works the same way: its own 14-day trial, and Licence... in Settings, in the right-click menu and in the tray menu. One key turns on both versions - the UXP plugin and the AHK version.
When something goes wrong
The panel tells you what it tried. Read that first.
The list is empty
The panel prints what it asked InDesign and what came back, in place of the
rows. In the plugin there is also Diagnostics… and Show the
log… in the panel menu, and the same text is written to
panel.log in the data folder. Send that rather than a
description; it names the step that stopped.
A document is greyed out
The file is not where it was, or its drive is not reachable. Connect the share and refresh. If it has genuinely gone, Del takes the row out.
A row has no folder and no version
InDesign shortened its menu label past the point where anything on disk could be matched to it. The row still opens. Once you have opened it, the panel knows the path and the row fills in.
The order still looks wrong
Refresh. The panel reads InDesign's menu when it opens, when you refresh, and when InDesign says something changed — but a document opened by some other route, while the panel was not watching, is only noticed at the next look.
The panel is slow to open
Keep at most is the first thing to look at: every row is a look at the disk. Then the version column, especially over a share, and then page previews on very large documents.
A preview is missing
The document was saved without one. Use Render a preview with InDesign on that row, or switch on Always Save Preview Images with Documents in InDesign's preferences so future saves carry one.
If the plugin says too large to read instead of "no preview", the document most likely has one, but the file is over the limit in Settings (Read previews from files up to, 80 MB by default). The plugin has to read a whole file to find its preview, so it skips big ones. Raise the limit, or use Render a preview with InDesign. The AHK version has no such limit; it reads files in parts.