Here’s a list of the major new changes in 2027 compared to the 2026 version of EasyCatalog:
Composition Plans (Beta)
Composition Plans introduce a reusable, JSON-based system for building and paginating EasyCatalog content. Combine formatting rules, text frames, tables and containers in a single composition, with support for nested groups, record iteration, continuation and detailed layout controls. Existing InDesign page items and their relationships can be converted into plans, whose structured format also lends itself to AI-assisted authoring and refinement. Plans can be edited, validated and executed through the user interface or scripting API. The Scripting module is required. Further information can be found here.
New Browser-Based Reports
The Data Panel’s Reports menu now includes interactive reports for reviewing logs, custom fields, field options and field dependencies, including circular dependencies. Searchable references cover Lua commands, Custom Field commands and supported CSS properties. The Custom Field commands reference also embeds machine-readable JSON to help AI assistants formulate commands. The existing data-source browser report has also been restyled for improved readability.
Improved Diagnostic Logging
Detailed tracing can be enabled independently for CSS, HTML, Lua and image processing, with multiple categories available together. Improved error messages help diagnose CSS and Lua commands, image imports and downloads, container population and Composition Plan execution. Further information is here.
Quick Search Enhancements
Quick Search now supports regular expressions: for example, /Carbon|Carter/ finds either value. Option-clicking columns restricts searches to the selected columns, while clickable result indicators help you navigate directly to matches. Search processing and indicator drawing have also been optimised for large data sets.
Panel and Column Management
Multiple columns can now be selected using Option/Alt and moved together, and selected columns can be sorted alphabetically. Sorting can use displayed appearance rather than underlying values, column widths can be fitted to their headers, and visibility can be edited from the column context menu. Performance when displaying large grouped data sets has also been improved.
New Cross-Reference Custom Fields
A new Cross-Reference custom-field type provides a clearer and more efficient way to create cross-reference lookups.
Field Options Enhancements
Field options can now be copied and pasted for multiple fields. Partial field-option XML can also be pasted to update selected settings, with confirmation before existing options are replaced.
Post-Population Scripts for Text Fields
Text fields can now run an ExtendScript after initial insertion and subsequent content updates. Scripts receive the populated text range, document, data source and record, allowing final formatting or processing to be applied automatically—for example, adjusting currency symbols or decimal values while preserving the field’s underlying content.
Table Formatting with CSS
A new Table Options setting accepts CSS-style declarations mapped to InDesign table DOM properties, extending the property syntax already used elsewhere in EasyCatalog.
Position-Based Tabular Field Specifiers
Convert to Field Specifiers can now generate tabular specifiers using a field’s column position instead of its fixed column identifier. These specifiers resolve to whichever field occupies that position when the content is populated.
Cell Finder Enhancements
A new Cell Found action allows matched content to be replaced with a named EasyCatalog field.
Tabular Data and Excel Report Improvements
Enhanced tabular fields can now resolve ambiguously tagged image frames to the most likely child image field. Excel reports also identify locally edited values with a blue dotted cell outline.
Improved Image Offset Handling
When updating image offsets, EasyCatalog now uses the measurement unit specified by the field’s suffix, ensuring consistent measurements when the existing value is empty or uses a different unit.
XML Data Source Improvements
XML Data Provider field lists can now be sorted, searched and filtered.
Configuration Improvements
The Configuration > Save As dialog displays settings from the active configuration when a single configuration is applied, and the maximum number of automatically generated filters has increased from 100 to 500.
Scripting Enhancements
The new Text.ecApplyProperties() method applies EasyCatalog CSS-style properties directly to an InDesign text range. Regular scripts can use ecDataNode to inspect and transform data hierarchies, then pass prepared data directly to DataView.paginate(). The new ecFormattingRuleInstances collection on documents, pages and spreads lets scripts find, place and manage formatting rule instances, including populating them with ecDataNode data, updating their artwork and saving changes back to the rule store. CSS DOM method calls now support array arguments, and Datasource.lastSyncTime returns a DateTime object.
Expanded Lua Record and Record Set APIs
New Lua APIs simplify reading and updating multiple fields, converting records to Lua tables, iterating through records and fields, cloning record sets and creating nested groups. Optional cached field-name lookup also improves repeated field access.
Lua Custom Field Enhancements
Advanced Lua custom fields can now monitor field access during a test and suggest updates to their dependency lists, including fields accessed through standard embedded commands. Detection follows the executed test path, so fields used only in unexecuted branches are not added automatically. Standard custom-field functions are also available through the Standard object.
New Lua XML and Utility Functions
Expanded XML APIs support XPath value lookup, existence checks, match counts, relative queries, attribute access and conversion to nested Lua tables. A new topoints helper converts supported measurement values into points, while TABLE.newexcel() now returns nil and an error message if creation fails.
Enterprise Provider Compatibility Checks
Enterprise Lua data providers can now declare the minimum EasyCatalog build they require. EasyCatalog checks this before synchronisation and prevents incompatible providers from running on older installations.