Migrating from InDesign to Publisher

[Martien]

How can I best migrate all my InDesign documents to Affinity Publisher?

My license renewal for Adobe Creative Cloud is approaching in August, and I’ve recently bought the Affinity suite for iPad en iMac and want to migrate all my InDesign files to Affinity. I don’t want to get stuck alter on to be needing InDesign to save or export an InDesign doc in a special way for Publisher to easily open it. How to best approach this?

I’m aware of Publisher’s excellent PDF import, but maybe there are better ways. Also, what are the best settings for PDF export in InDesign to assist Publisher importing them?

Plus, is there a good way to batch convert or export InDesign files to secure maximum compatibility oath Publisher?

Please advise.

[JaneE]

Right now, PDF import is the only way, as far as I know. IDML import will be added at some point, so I would export all of your InDesign files to the IDML format too. Someone shared a script for batch processing to idml.

[Martien]

Ah, great. Thank you very much.

I’ve also cobbled together a little command line that lists all my InDesign files using SpotLight’s metadata:

mdfind '(((kMDItemContentTypeTree = "indesign*"cdw)) || ((kMDItemKind = "indesign*"cdw)))'

 

[garrettm30]

My opinion is that it is not yet time to migrate your old documents. I have started trying to use Publisher for new documents when I can, but I just renewed my CC subscription only a couple weeks ago knowing that I will need it for a while yet at least for my old documents and a few projects needing functionality of a mature app. Meanwhile, I am making sure all my necessary InDesign files are saved as both PDF and IDML.

We have been told that IDML is coming at some point; we just don't know when. In fact, it seems like they have hinted that work on it will start in the near term, if it hasn't already. Here is why I say that (and notice my following comment and Pauls' reaction to it):

That's no promise of course, and who knows how long it could take, but the intent seems to be there.