Xtags
Transform your simple tagged text into complete, complex InDesign documents
- Xtags turns a simple tagged text format (XPress Tags plus its own powerful additions) into InDesign story content, and vice versa.
- With Xtags, you can build documents with fully formatted text, anchored and unanchored objects, sizing the objects to fit the frames, or vice versa, and much more.
- You can apply master pages or spreads at any point, giving you serious layout power.
- Xtags provides macros for brevity and power, and translation tables for easy conversion.
- You can extract document contents in the same simple text format, using Xtags.
- Xtags has been deployed in production since the year 2000, with hundreds of sites world-wide. It’s a rock-solid, industrial-strength data publishing solution.
- A trial takes just a couple of minutes to install, costs nothing, and gives you 15 days to try out all aspects of the product.
- Read on for the full story, or use the top-of-page menu to jump directly to the relevant page section.
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The Xtags story
Xtags, a plug-in for InDesign, is an import/export text filter supporting the industry-standard QuarkXPress Tags language plus its own extended tags, for tremendous document-building and extracting power.
With Xtags, you can build any text content with full styling (the same as XPress Tags), anchor and fill picture and text frames, build and fill unanchored frames, size picture contents to containing frames, size frames to content (text or picture) in various flexible ways, translate text and tags on input, use macros to reduce typing, apply master pages and spreads, and more.
For output, Xtags will save the contents of any text story, including anchored text and picture frames, and will also save the structure and content of any selected text, picture or group frames.
Applications
Xtags is designed for • picture-based data publishing • complex book building • classified ads building • code conversion, and much more.
Features and benefits
do data-side, tag-driven automated document building
Build documents dynamically, combining variable and static text and graphics, by inserting tags into the text stream prior to importing. Add tags programmatically using Applescript, Visual Basic, or any other programming language which can address your original data and produce a text file (FileMaker and Access calculation fields are also excellent tools for introducing tags in your data). Insert tags manually in word processing documents.
create and fill text and picture frames
Create and fill anchored text and graphics frames in-line with the tagged text, controlling all properties of the anchored frames, using appropriate tag parameters. You can fill a text box with further tagged text of any sort, and can fill a graphics box with a picture of any importable type. Anchored frames are fully supported on output as well.
Create and fill unanchored frames at the text insertion point, at an absolute position, at a position relative to another box, or on the pasteboard. You control all properties of the unanchored box using appropriate tag parameters. These unanchored frames can span columns and can be moved freely once imported. Unanchored frames (including groups of frames) are supported on output as well.
auto-size text and picture frames
Fit a box to its contents horizontally and/or vertically, as well as fitting a picture to its box. You can also use various combinations of auto-sizing, such as fitting the picture to the box horizontally, then fitting the box to the resulting picture vertically.
use automated translations
Build a set of string translations which are applied to the input text, at a lower level than XPress Tag interpretation (so that the translation target strings may contain tags). These substitutions can be as simple as character replacement, or as complex as foreign front-end coding translation.
employ time- and space-saving macros
Use parametrized macros to simplify the invocation of common or complex tag and text sequences.
create complex data-driven layouts
Choose the master spread or page to be applied to the text at the point of invocation. With this facility, you can build fairly complex documents with input-driven per-spread or per-page layout.
copy/paste Xtagged-text between documents and applications
Easily transfer or save document elements in textual form (for example, store a “freeze-dried” group of frames in a database field).
script for both input and output
Script all Xtags actions with platform scripting tools. You can even input from and output to strings in your scripts, to avoid temporary file creation.
use tag formatting options for export
Suppress style sheet definitions on export, output separate tags for ease of search and replace, omit default elements in any Xtags parameter list, etc.
use relative values in tags
E.g., increase point size by 20%, omit parameters, and apply only the character settings from a style sheet to portions of a paragraph.
enjoy advanced error reporting
Get optional reporting from Xtags as errors are encountered, with a brief message inserted directly in-line at the point of error.
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What users say
Here’s a sampling of the feedback we’ve received from Xtags users over the years (and, earlier, its predecessor, Xtags for QuarkXPress). See Xtags testimonials for a whole page at a time.
(You can scroll through the testimonials in place using the previous/next page arrows below. Click the title of any longer testimonial ending in “…” to see the rest.)
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Xtags case studies
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Try Xtags
Starting a trial is painless, taking only a few minutes, and giving you full-featured operation for 15 days at no cost. (Contact us if you need longer for a full evaluation.)
| Xtags 2.18.1 for InDesign 2026 | ⤓ macOS | ⤓ Windows |
| Xtags 2.18.1 for InDesign 2025 | ⤓ macOS | ⤓ Windows |
| Xtags 2.18.1 for InDesign 2024 | ⤓ macOS | ⤓ Windows |
- To download, find your InDesign major version and then your operating system above, and click the appropriate link.
- Once downloaded, quit InDesign if running, double-click the downloaded installer to install the plugin, then re-start InDesign. Xtags’ File and Edit sub-menus will be available at that point.
- On first use, you’ll be prompted to enter your license. Select Request Trial.
We strongly encourage you to try out the software in your real-world environment before purchasing. Your just-installed and trial-activated Xtags plugin is a fully-functional version that will operate in trial mode for 15 days, including all Pro features.
Also note that you can purchase a license at any point during the trial, and continue using Xtags without re-installing: once purchased, simply choose Help > Xtags > About > License and enter your new license information, then OK your way out.
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Buy Xtags licenses
You can purchase subscription licenses—or just learn your localized cost should you purchase—via our online store. Prices start at 239 USD for 1 user / 12 months.
After a successful purchase, you will be shown a page with your new license(s), and will also receive an email with the same information. You should save a copy of this license information somewhere safe, because you’ll never be shown a full license again in the user interface (to protect you from casual piracy).
When prompted for a license on first use of the software (or when your trial has expired), copy and paste the license you received from the email or web page into the prompt, and enter your name, optional affiliation and email.
See our sales page for complete information about managing licenses, users, renewals, etc.
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Install or update Xtags
If you’re looking to install Xtags for a trial, see the trial instructions above.
The installer downloads below are the most up-to-date versions of Xtags. Use them in any non-trial situation—when you need either a fresh installation under a new or existing license or an update to the latest version for an existing licensed installation.
| Xtags 2.18.1 for InDesign 2026 | ⤓ macOS | ⤓ Windows |
| Xtags 2.18.1 for InDesign 2025 | ⤓ macOS | ⤓ Windows |
| Xtags 2.18.1 for InDesign 2024 | ⤓ macOS | ⤓ Windows |
- To download, find your InDesign major version and then your operating system above, and click the appropriate link.
- Once downloaded, quit InDesign if running, double-click the downloaded installer to install the plugin, then re-start InDesign. Xtags’ File and Edit sub-menus will be available at that point.
- On first use, if you haven’t already activated the license, you’ll be prompted to enter your license.
- If you’re waiting for your license to be purchased by someone, select Request Trial for the interim. Once you receive your license, open the plugin’s About > License dialog, enter that new license and verify your name, optional affiliation and email, then OK your way out.
To use Xtags under older, unsupported versions of InDesign, see all the Xtags installers.
For a reverse chronological release history, see all the Xtags news.
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Learn Xtags
Xtags has a complete user guide (PDF download). It’s fairly old, but still accurate.
Documentation of features added since the manual are found in the release news notes.
The Xtags book
Besides a full manual, Xtags also has an outstanding, freely-downloadable book, Xtags Maximized, with over 200 pages in 9 chapters, diving both deep and wide into using Xtags for serious production work.
Even though it’s some years old now, and written assuming Xtags for QuarkXPress, it’s still accurate as far as it goes. Xtags hasn’t really changed much since then, but only had new features added.
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Get Xtags help
When you run into problems, please follow these directions.
- Make sure you’re running the very latest version of Xtags (the current version is shown in the Install or update section above). If not, please install the latest version and try again (you’ll have to restart InDesign)—many issues are solved at this point.
- If that doesn’t help, then start a support ticket using Help > Xtags > Contact Support, which fires up your default email application with critical information we’ll need to be of any help.
- Write a concise summary of the problem in that email, including the steps to reproduce.
- Normally, we’ll have to see your documents (InDesign and Xtags input file), so zip up the documents and data files in question and attach them to the email you’re composing. This doesn’t necessarily have to happen at the first submission, so don’t send yet if you’re not sure. (We’ve been handling confidential customer information for 35 years without a single problem, so you can rest assured your data is in good hands.)
- Send the email (which goes to support@emsoftware.com). We should respond fairly quickly, usually the same business day unless you’re many time zones ahead or behind us. Though we can’t make guarantees, we get constant feedback that people are surprised at how quickly they get a response.
If you have a sales-related or license-related question, first see sales & license information, and if that doesn’t help, send a normal email to sales@emsoftware.com.
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Follow Xtags news
(You can scroll through the news items in place using the previous/next page arrows below. Click the title of any news item to view the content.)