Delete all hidden actions steps

Question

I put this question in Adobe Photoshop Forum and Adobe Photoshop Scripting Forum more than a month ago and I didn't get any solution. I try here.

Doing actions for third-party users, in the testing process many steps and stops are created while the action progress. Once finished, the action ends with dozens of hidden steps that I must eliminate before making the delivery. This process is manual, selecting the hidden actions one by one without any wrong step, and deleting them. It would be great to have the option to automatically select all the hidden actions and eliminate them in a click, but apparently it doesn't exist.

Does anyone know any script or the way to make this process less tedious?

Answer 1

Maybe someone will have a more definitive answer, but there're several points.

I don't think there's an easy way to know if an action step is enabled or not. However, there's this amazing person, xbytor, who made a huge library of different functions that he uses for his scripts. For a non-developer like me they're hard to read, but it includes a particular script: ActionFileToJavaScript.jsx, that writes an atn file to a jsx file(s), including the information about status of the steps. So if I had a task like yours,

1. I'd export all actions as .atn
2. convert them to .jsx with xbytor's script

3. using a different script I'd read this file to find what steps are marked as disabled in which actions:

   step1();                  // Make
   step2();                  // Make
   step3();                  // Make
   step4(false, false);      // Make
   step5(false, false);      // Make
   step6(false, false);      // Make
   step7();                  // Make
   step8();                  // Make
   

4. using an AM code from ScriptListener I'd then remove all the marked steps:

   var desc = new ActionDescriptor();
       var ref1 = new ActionReference();
       ref1.putIndex( cTID('Cmnd'), 4 ); //index of the step to remove
       ref1.putName( cTID('Actn'), "Action 3" ); //name of the action
       ref1.putName( cTID('ASet'), "Set 1" ); //name of the action set
   desc.putReference( cTID('null'), ref1 );
   executeAction( cTID('Dlt '), desc, DialogModes.NO );
   

or if you're a better coder than me you can just use his Actions library to get information you need directly from an .atn file.

Answer 2

I'm pretty sure that this isn't possible.

The whole idea of the "toggle on/off" option is so that there's a temporary way to (de)activate certain steps - so that you don't have to delete it.

---

Q: Can you automatically delete all (in)visible layers in Illustrator?
A: No, but with scripting it's possible.

I'm going to say the same thing applies with the actions. You may be able to get a script which will accomplish this.