Extracting InDesign layer names to text or .csv

Question

How can I extract a list of all layer names into either a text or .csv file.? What Acrobat or scripting tools are available to do this task?

The list will be used to create a table communicating to commercial printers what layers should be activated for any particular print run. Each PDF may contain 15 to 50 such layers, combined to create 5 to 30 unique print pieces. Our PDFs are exported directly from InDesign.

I expect the resulting text to be pastable into a column within an excel file, or for the resulting .csv file to contain the layer names within individual cells of column one.

Answer 1

Here is a script that:

• Prompts you for a destination folder.
• Creates a new text file with the same name as the active document.
• Writes the name of each layer in the active document to the text file.
• Saves the text file and closes it.

Each line in the script is commented.

// Open dialog to select path for text file
var textFilePath = Folder.selectDialog("Select a destination for the layer list text file.");

// Set text file name to active document name + .txt
var textFileName = app.activeDocument.name + ".txt";

// Create text file
var textFile = new File(textFilePath + "/" + textFileName);

// Set text file encoding
textFile.encoding = "UTF-8";

// Open text file
textFile.open("w");

// Loop through all layers of active document
for (var i = 0; i < app.activeDocument.layers.length; i++) {

    // Write layer name to textfile
    textFile.write(app.activeDocument.layers[i].name + "\n");

}

// Close text file
textFile.close();

If you instead want a .csv file, you should be able to just add a "," after each layer name instead of a "\n", and change the extension from .txt to .csv.