If your newsroom uses Adobe InDesign for print production, Newspack supports exporting posts in InDesign Tagged Text (IDTT) format. This lets you quickly pull content into InDesign layouts without copy/paste or reformatting.

What it does

  • Export a single post file using the row action on the Posts screen
  • Export multiple posts at once as a ZIP file using a bulk action.
  • Easily import exported content into your InDesign template with predefined paragraph and character styles.

How to use it

  1. Enable the feature
    • Go to Newspack → Settings → Print and ensure the InDesign Export feature is enabled.
  2. Navigate to the Posts screen
    • Go to Posts → All Posts in the WordPress dashboard.
    • You can filter posts by category, date, or author to narrow your selection if needed.
  3. Export a single post
    • Hover over the post title and click Export to InDesign.
    • This will immediately download a .txt file for that post to your computer.
  4. Export multiple posts
    • Use the checkboxes to select multiple posts.
    • From the Bulk actions dropdown, select Export to InDesign, then click Apply.
    • This will download a ZIP file containing .txt files for each selected post.

Importing into InDesign

After download:

  1. Open your InDesign template
  2. Use File → Place to import the .txt file into your document
  3. InDesign will apply formatting based on the tags in the file and the paragraph/character styles in your template

Note: You must have matching style names defined in your InDesign file for the tags to apply formatting correctly.

Style names used in the export

The exported Tagged Text uses the following paragraph and character styles. To apply formatting correctly, your InDesign template should include styles with matching names:

Paragraph Styles

  • Headline
  • Deck
  • Byline
  • Dateline
  • Body

Character Styles

  • Italics
  • Bold
  • BoldItalics
  • Link

You can rename or remap these in your InDesign template as needed, just make sure the names match exactly for styles to apply automatically.

Custom style tags for paragraph and heading blocks

In addition to default styles, you can also assign custom paragraph and character style tags to individual paragraph and heading blocks in the post editor.

  1. Select a Paragraph or Heading block in the post editor.
  2. In the Block settings panel, expand the Advanced section.
  3. Add a style tag in the “InDesign exporter tag name” field:
    • This tag will replace the default style name (e.g., Body, Headline) in the exported file.
    • You can use any paragraph or character style defined in your InDesign template.
  4. Export as usual — your custom tag will be used in the Tagged Text file for that block.

This is helpful if your print layout uses custom styling (e.g., “Quote”, “PullQuote”, “Sidebar”) not covered by the default tags.

Example

If you add PullQuote as a custom tag for a Paragraph block, the exported text will use PullQuote as the paragraph style instead of the default Body.

Note: You must define the matching style name in your InDesign template for formatting to apply correctly.

Tips

  • Only posts visible on the screen are included in a bulk export. Use Screen Options to show more than 20 at a time (up to 100). You can also use filters (category, date, author) to narrow your list before exporting.
  • If your post includes images with captions or photo credits, these will appear at the end of the exported file. Captions and credits are exported in plain text, following the main body content.