Conditional Text formatting "spreads" when I save as IDML.;

Forum|Forum|8 months ago
August 9, 2025
5 replies
321 views

I've got a 400-page document, one spread. There are several instances where I've applied a condition to one word or sentence. Since my INDD file is so large, I saved it as IDML to clean it up. When I resaved the IDML as INDD, the condition had been applied to several pages following a word or sentence that was conditional. It did do it everywhere, just a few places.

I searched for the condition and reset things to unconditional, but I'd like to figure out why it happens, and maybe not have it happen again.

Bug

davecourtemanche

Inspiring

Just a side note regarding file bloat - this might be a good time to explore the book function of ID. I find it so much handier for long documents.

Joel Cherney

Community Expert

Since my INDD file is so large, I saved it as IDML to clean it up. When I resaved the IDML as INDD, the condition had been applied to several pages following a word or sentence that was conditional. It did do it everywhere, just a few places.

While Bob is correct in the narrow sense - you don't techincally need to run through IDML in order to reduce file size - InDesign is not Functioning As Designed, I think, if it's changing how your conditions are applied when being run through IDML.

Can you share the document? Or can you create a stand-in document that recreates this issue? If it's a bug that can be recreated in a second document, then it's something that the InDesign development team is going to want to know about. If it's something unique about your 400-page document, which we cannot recreate in a separate document, then we might be able to figure out what went wrong with your document, but I doubt that it'd be worth a bug report.