Is it possible to limit the spell checking feature in inDesign to only check the text on the pages?

Question

Is it possible to limit the spell checking feature in inDesign to only check the text on the pages ?

I often write notes off the side of the page for myself, that dont need to be spell checked as they are just internal design notes to myself, but at the moment inDesign goes through all of these notes also.

Answer 1

Move all your side notes to a separate layer, then lock and hide this other layer when you run the spelling feature.

Also, InDesign has a built-in notes feature which you can use instead:

• https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/adding-editorial-notes-indesign.html

Answer 2

If you have a specific paragraph style applied to your side notes, you can just change language to [no language].

If you don't, a simple script could run through textFrames on pasteboards and change their stories' applied language to [no language].

Something like this:

var myTxtFrames = app.activeDocument.textFrames;

for (var i = 0; i < myTxtFrames.length; i++) {
    if (myTxtFrames[i].parentPage == null) {
        myTxtFrames[i].parentStory.appliedLanguage = app.languagesWithVendors[0];
    }
}