I was wondering if anybody has tried to load object styles from another InDesign document using AS? I have a document that has a many pre-definied drop shadow object styles. But it appears that object styles is a document preference and not an application preference. So I am looking for a way to quickly load the styles from a document on one’s local machine? Does anybody have any thoughts about my dilemma. I have seen nothing in the dictionary related to loading object styles, only seen reference to applying a style. 
Hello.
Indesign is totally Greek? to me? (something like that.), but I think that if you tried to write your style as an object to a file via AppleScript’s write command, then AppleScript would make sure that everything the top level property references would be written with it to that file. (Serialization), which means that you could have AS store the Document styles for you independent of their original documents. It is a thought worth and investigation.
You’ll find a tutorial on AS Read and write here
Hopes this may help you.
Hello.
I found this passage int the article referenced to above:
I think this can be interpreted to that if you write out one specific style of a document, to disk, then it will be fully resolved, which means that you later on can read in that style from that file, and assign it to another document.
I really hope this works, that would have been nifty!
Object styles straddle the scope of both application and document. If you want to use a style across multiple documents, it should be defined in the application context. There are too many entanglements with document references (based on, character styles, etc.) to easily use a document defined style in another document; it may be possible, but it would be a royal PITA best avoided. If all you have need of is a drop shadow, that could easily be assigned to a variable and duplicated to the 2nd doc, just not as part of an object style.
Why not create a base ID template and work from that to create new documents, that way the styles are there. Another option might be to create a library that has items with the styles applied so that when you drag them into the document it brings the object styles with it. And last you could have a library “document” that you copy and paste from, again this should bring the styles with it.
Loading the 15 drop shadows to each of our 30 templates ahead of time would work. However many documents will not require being moved to a “new” template, and our "fast paced production users would not connect the dots and attempt to apply a drop shadow using a keyboard shortcut and then wonder why it doesn’t work.
So I was thinking for those older documents, once the operator realizes the drop shadow(s) is not working, they could run a script that would load the folder of drop drop shadows to their object styles panel (without having to browse to a file on their local machine). Well, that was my intent anyway, if that makes any sense? It’s a bit difficult to describe the limitation of the production users I have to work with