ExtendScript of the Week: Deleting Unused formats in a Book

Continuing with the “ExtendScript of the Week” series, this week we are providing a script which will delete all the unused formats in a book. The formats to be deleted will be table, paragraph and character. First of all, unused table formats will be deleted, followed by unused para formats and lastly unused character formats.

About the Script:

• It works on the active book in FM session.
• It will work for the hierarchical book as well.
• It iterates over all the book components and silently opens them one by one
• Deletes the unused formats in the book component in the order mentioned above
• Saves the document and closes them.

Steps to run the Script:

• Download the script and the test files which has been attached here.
• Open the book file in FM and make sure that it is active
• Open the first chapter of the book
• Open the character, paragraph and table catalogs to see that the document has unused formats. There will be a light check mark against the used formats which distinguishes it from the unused formats
• Now close the document and run the script
• An alert will come indicating that the operation has finished
• Now check the book components to see that unused formats has been deleted.

Important Note

Since this script will modify each of the book components and will save them, it is advised to have a backup of your book in case you are using this script

Vikash Kumar, FrameMaker Engineering Team