Preflight – Your New Tool to Ensure Every InDesign Report is ESEF Compatible. Always.

Collaborative workflow for corporate reports often includes several layers of checks and rechecks, which can make the process repetitive and time-consuming. After initial drafts and compliance verification, the document goes through rounds of executive review. Changes from the CEO, CFO, or legal teams are a given, and while these updates are essential, each revision has the potential to throw off formatting, misalign graphics, or create other issues that slip through unnoticed. For designers, copywriters, and compliance teams, managing these back-and-forths can feel like an endless cycle, adding stress and bottlenecks right up until the deadline.

Keeping Up with Compliance: A Growing Challenge

As compliance requirements become more complex, it’s even harder to stay on top of every rule — especially when racing against deadlines. Based on feedback from our clients and partners, we know that formatting and tagging issues are common pain points. That’s why we enhanced Preflight— with a ESEF specific profile that works directly inside Adobe InDesign, catching issues before they can cause problems down the line.

Meet Preflight: Real-Time Formatting and Compliance Checks in InDesign

Preflight is the newest addition to the CtrlPrint platform, designed to make report production more efficient and stress-free. It provides real-time feedback on your report’s formatting as you work in InDesign, flagging common formatting issues and ESEF (European Single Electronic Format) compliance.

With Preflight, you can ensure your reports meet the latest standards without needing separate compliance tools or extensive manual checks.

Key Features of Preflight

1. ESEF Preset: Keep ESEF Compliance in Check

For reports that need to meet ESEF standards, the ESEF Preset scans your document for potential compliance issues, including:

• Substituted/alternate glyph – Flags unusual characters that may cause display issues.
• Grouped text frames – Ensures grouped elements don’t create compatibility problems.
• Overlapping text frames – Detects overlaps that could affect readability.
• Tables exceeding frame width – Highlights tables that extend beyond their boundaries.
• Private Unicode characters – Identifies non-standard Unicode characters.
• Frame order – Checks the order of frames to ensure logical reading flow.
• Missing links – Flags broken links for images or media.
• Overset text – Alerts you to any text that’s cut off in its frame.

2. Standard Preset: Catch Common Formatting Issues

For non-ESEF projects that still require precision, the Standard Preset focuses on common issues that might impact print or digital output, such as:

• Missing links – Ensures all images and assets are correctly linked.
• Overset text – Highlights text that’s cut off in frames.

Using Preflight in Your Workflow

1. Choose the Right Preset – Start by selecting either the ESEF or Standard Preset based on your project needs. This activates checks tailored to either regulatory or general formatting requirements.
2. Get Real-Time Feedback – Preflight automatically monitors your document as you work, catching issues on the spot so you can fix them right away.
3. Simplify Compliance – With compliance and formatting checks directly within InDesign, Preflight eliminates tedious steps, freeing your team to focus on creating high-quality content and design.

Save Time, Reduce Stress, and Ensure Compliance

Preflight is designed to simplify report production by catching potential issues before they become costly mistakes. With Preflight, you can feel confident that your reports are accurate, compliant, and ready for submission—without spending hours on tedious checks or dealing with last-minute surprises.

Ready to streamline your report production?Try Preflight with CtrlPrint and make compliance part of your natural workflow. Get Started with CtrlPrint today.