Setting Up a Document > About automating tasks

About automating tasks

While creating your documents, you may want to perform the same task numerous times. This section explains how to use the History panel to automate repetitive tasks.

To repeat a series of steps once or twice, replay them directly from the History panel, which records your steps as you work on a document. (For basic information about the History panel, see About the History panel.) To automate a task that you perform often, you can create a new command that performs that task automatically.

Some mouse movements, such as selecting something in the Document window by clicking or dragging, can't be played back or saved as part of saved commands. When you make such a movement, a black line appears in the History panel (although the line does not become obvious until you perform another action). To avoid movements that can't be played back, use the arrow keys instead of the mouse to move the insertion point within the Document window. To make or extend a selection, hold down the Shift key while pressing an arrow key.

Note: If a black mouse-movement indicator line appears while you're performing a task you want to repeat later, you can undo back past that step and try another approach, perhaps using the arrow keys.

Certain other steps also aren't repeatable, such as dragging a page element to somewhere else on the page. When you perform such a step, a menu-command icon with a small red X appears in the History panel.

Steps are replayed exactly as they were originally performed; you can't modify the steps as you replay them. For example, if you previously changed the color of a table cell to red, applying that step to another table cell changes that cell's color to red as well; you can't specify a different color when you apply the step to a new cell.