Publish Items > Publishing items > Publishing items for Adobe InDesign

Publishing items for Adobe InDesign

The Surpass Publisher can publish items retrieved from the Surpass Platform for use in Adobe InDesign.

This article explains how to publish items for use in Adobe InDesign.

In this section

1. Select items to publish

Select the items you want to publish by selecting their corresponding checkboxes.

You can select all items in the list using the checkbox in the header row. All items in the list are selected by default.

IMPORTANT: Only Multiple Choice, Multiple Response, Essay, Either/Or, and Short Answer question stems, media, and answer options; Numerical Entry question stems; item set shared content; and Introduction, Information, and Finish Pages can be published for Adobe InDesign.

For more information on the Surpass Publisher item grid, read About the Surpass Publisher item grid.

2. Select Publish selected items

Select Publish selected items.

3. Configure exporting options

Select InDesign Document from the Publishing Format drop-down menu.

The Publish dialog will resize to hide exporting options not relevant to Adobe InDesign publishing.

4. Specify a save destination

Select […] to choose a save destination for your published items. You must give the ZIP file a name.

Select Next to continue.

5. Review and publish package

Review the package summary in Step 2 of the Publish wizard before publishing.

Select Publish to publish your items. Your items are published in a ZIP file in your specified Save destination.

Once Publish has been selected, you can view the progress of the publishing process within the wizard. You can also choose to Stop publishing if required.

Upon completion, a Publish report detailing the success or failure of the publish attempt is generated. For more information on the generated report, read Downloading publish reports.

The ZIP file contains an InDesignExport_{YYYY-MM-DDTHH-MM-SS} XML file and a folder of any media assets.

NOTE: If you encounter issues when publishing, refer to the 'Publishing errors' listed in the Downloading publish reports article for errors and issues to check your content against before trying to publish again.

6. Importing items into Adobe InDesign

To import your items into Adobe InDesign, go to File > Import XML… in InDesign and find and select your InDesignExport file.

Before selecting OK, enable the following XML Import Options:

Create link
Apply XSLT: Use stylesheet from XML
Import text elements into tables if tags match
Do not import contents of whitespace-only elements
Delete elements, frames, and content that do not match imported XML
Import CALS tables as InDesign tables

For help with Adobe InDesign, read Adobe’s InDesign documentation. For help with importing XML into Adobe InDesign specifically, read ‘Import XML in InDesign’.

NOTE: This article was last updated in March 2026 and therefore any changes to Adobe InDesign since then may not be reflected here.