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Miker2426
Miker2426
Inspiring
February 10, 2019
Answered

Cut and paste into ID glitching hyphens

  • February 10, 2019
  • 2 replies
  • 820 views

I have to take a wide variety of different text files (PDF, Word, Text, etc..) and cut and paste them into InDesign. All of a sudden, if there are any hyphens in the text I'm pasting, ID glitches them, as if ID and/or the font "didn't have" hyphens. It doesn't matter where I get the text, or what font I'm using in ID. I have to go in and manually fix all the hyphens (which is a massive pain).

Can anyone tell me what's going on here, or offer any suggestions? Thanks in advance for any insight into fixing this annoying problem.

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This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Bill Silbert

I actually had the same thing happen to me on a job (which had slipped my mind when I wrote my first post) that I saw recently at work. I am answering this at home and have not been able to duplicate the problem here. However, I believe I was able to deal with it quite quickly my using Find/Change. I set it up by copying and pasting a hyphen that was showing highlighted in pink into the "Find:" field and then actually typing a hyphen into the "Change:" field. I then hit "Change All" and dealt with all of the pink hyphens in one fell swoop. I can't verify all of this because I recall it happening when I was in the midst of a lot of jobs but I think that it would be worth your time to give this work-around a try. As to the cause of it, since I've seen it myself, on at least one occasion, but not constantly, I can't say if it is a bug in the program or just a sign of some intermittent corruption.

2 replies

manal shanableh
manal shanableh
Legend
February 10, 2019

This is happen to me also when I place a docx file, usually I replace the the highlighted errors in pink with anther font and it work. just try to change the font by using find/change or one by one.

Bill Silbert
Community Expert
Bill SilbertCommunity Expert
Community Expert
February 10, 2019

What version of InDesign and what operating system are you using? Does this happen when you copy and paste from another InDesign document? Have you tried going into the Clipboard Handling section of your InDesign preferences and clicking on "Text Only" under "When Pasting Text and Tables From Other Applications"?

    Miker2426
    Miker2426Author
    Inspiring
    February 10, 2019

    Hi Bill!

    Thanks for the reply!

    I'm on Mac os High Sierra 10.13.6, InDesign 14.01. "Text Only" indeed checked in prefs.

    I did a little more experimenting. I'm currently using a template, so I'm pasting over past and/or greeked lettering that's already there. Pasting into this causes the glitch. If I create a fresh text box and paste into that, the default Myrid Pro font shows the pasted text (with hyphens) fine, but when I change the font to anything else, the glitch suddenly returns!

    This is super weird!!

    Thanks again.

    Bill Silbert
    Community Expert
    Bill SilbertCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
    Community Expert
    February 10, 2019

    I actually had the same thing happen to me on a job (which had slipped my mind when I wrote my first post) that I saw recently at work. I am answering this at home and have not been able to duplicate the problem here. However, I believe I was able to deal with it quite quickly my using Find/Change. I set it up by copying and pasting a hyphen that was showing highlighted in pink into the "Find:" field and then actually typing a hyphen into the "Change:" field. I then hit "Change All" and dealt with all of the pink hyphens in one fell swoop. I can't verify all of this because I recall it happening when I was in the midst of a lot of jobs but I think that it would be worth your time to give this work-around a try. As to the cause of it, since I've seen it myself, on at least one occasion, but not constantly, I can't say if it is a bug in the program or just a sign of some intermittent corruption.

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