InDesign viewer: open an .indd or .idml without InDesign
Sent an InDesign file by a designer, a print shop or an old project, and no InDesign to open it? Drop it here. An .idml gives up everything: page size, every story's text to copy, fonts, colours, styles, linked images and a sketch of each spread. An .indd gives what it stores openly: its page previews, the InDesign version that saved it, dates, edit history, fonts and links.
The file is read by this tab only. It is not uploaded and not changed.
What it shows
- From an .idml, the whole document's structure. Page size in millimetres, inches and points (an A4 page is stored as 595.276 × 841.89 points), the page count, spreads, facing pages, bleed and which master spread each page uses.
- Every story's text, in reading order (spread, page, then top to bottom), including text that overflows its frames. Copy it all, or save it as one .txt file with each story marked.
- The fonts the text really uses, family and style, worked out from each run's character style, paragraph style and local overrides, with how many characters each sets and whether InDesign had the font when the file was saved.
- Colour swatches with their model and values (C=15 M=100 Y=100 K=0, an RGB or Lab colour, a spot ink), tints and gradients; and every paragraph and character style, with how often it is used.
- Every linked image, with its file name, the folder it was placed from and the page it sits on, flagged when it is not inside the file. A missing link is the usual reason a print shop calls back.
- A sketch of each spread, drawn to scale from the frame outlines: text frames numbered by story, picture frames crossed, as InDesign shows empty frames.
- From an .indd, what it stores in the open. The page previews InDesign saved inside it (each saved as a JPEG), the InDesign version and so the oldest InDesign that can open it, when it was created and last saved, its document ID, the edit history of saves, the fonts and colours it used and the files it links to. InDesign also leaves older copies of this metadata in the file; they are listed, with their previews when they survive.
What it cannot do
- It does not render the pages as InDesign would. The spread sketch shows where the frames are, not the typeset page. For a true picture of the pages, ask for a PDF.
- It cannot read the text out of a binary .indd. InDesign's own format is not published. Only the metadata block inside it is documented, so for the text, fonts by run, swatches and layout you need the .idml: in InDesign, File › Export, format InDesign Markup (IDML).
- It cannot show linked images that are not in the file. Photos and logos are placed by reference; their names and original folders are listed, the pictures themselves are elsewhere.
- An .indd without a stored preview shows no picture. InDesign saves previews only when "Always Save Preview Images with Documents" is on, and by default only for the first page. The page says so plainly when there is none.
- It edits nothing, and the colour chips are a screen approximation of CMYK and Lab values, with no colour profile applied.
Useful to know about InDesign files
- .indd and .idml
- An .indd is InDesign's working file: a binary database, undocumented, and only readable by the InDesign version that saved it or a later one. An .idml (InDesign Markup Language, since InDesign CS4 in 2008) is the same document written as a ZIP of XML files: one per spread, one per story, plus fonts, styles and colours. Every InDesign since CS4 opens IDML, and so do some other layout programs, such as Affinity Publisher 2.
- Getting an .idml from an .indd
- Only InDesign can do it: File › Export, then choose InDesign Markup (IDML) as the format (older versions call it "InDesign CS4 or later (IDML)" under File › Save As). If you do not have InDesign, ask whoever sent the .indd for the .idml and a PDF; for printing, ask for a packaged folder (File › Package), which gathers the fonts and linked images beside the document.
- Which InDesign opens which file
- The version number decides it: CS4 is 6.0, CS5 7.0, CS5.5 7.5, CS6 8.0, CC 9.0, CC 2014 10.0, CC 2015 11.0, CC 2017 12.0, then 13.0 for 2018 up to 19.0 for 2024 and 20.0 for 2025. An .indd saved by 19.0 will not open in 18.0; its .idml will. This page reads the version from the file's metadata or the IDML's own header.
- The preview inside an .indd
- With "Always Save Preview Images with Documents" switched on (Preferences › File Handling), InDesign writes a JPEG of the first page, or of up to every page, into the file's XMP metadata at each save, at 128, 256, 512 or 1024 pixels. That JPEG is what this page shows: a picture InDesign made at the last save, so it can lag behind the content if the preference was switched off later.
- Points, millimetres and inches
- InDesign stores every measurement in points, 72 to the inch: 1 pt = 0.3528 mm. US Letter is 612 × 792 pt (8.5 × 11 in); A4 is 595.276 × 841.89 pt (210 × 297 mm). Bleed, the extra picture beyond the trim, is usually 3 mm or 1/8 in (9 pt).