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Participant
August 13, 2017
Answered

INDD: Text wrap around circle doesn't look right

  • August 13, 2017
  • 5 replies
  • 5030 views

In InDesign, I'm trying to wrap text around the right side of a circle. Simple, right?

See image. Note how on the bottom half of the circle, the lines of text aren't meeting the text wrap boundary like they are on the top half. See the last five lines of text. The effect is that the space between the circle and the text doesn't look even all the way down. I've messed with many different settings and can't figure it out. Any help would be appreciated.

    Correct answer Randy Hagan

    You've just run across the difference between mathematical alignment and optical alignment.

    InDesign does perfect things very well. And as Scott outlines above, the "text wrap" takes the entire character height to Top of Caps into account as it decides where alignment is made to the border standoff of the text wrap. So your "perfect" mathematical alignment appears to be a bit off optically.

    That's where operator skill comes in to make imperfect fixes where perfect things don't work. In short, we need to screw things up until they work.

    If you're experienced with editing paths in Adobe Illustrator, or adjusting clipping paths in Adobe Photoshop, this job will be much easier. If you're not, just click on the link below to learn how to manipulate paths within InDesign, and learn about powerful skills which will make things much easier for you in all three programs:

    Edit paths in InDesign

    Now, on to messing things up until they work:

    1. Click on your circle with the Direct Selection Tool, which highlights both the circle and the text wrap standoff. Then drop horizontal and vertical ruler guides on the standoff anchor points as shown below:

    2. Get your Ellipse Tool, hold down the Shift key, and draw a circle within the ruler guides you just laid down. Use the Object>Arrange>Send to Back menu command to place the larger circle behind the smaller one. Then change the circle to another color. In my example below, I changed it to a fill of None and a 1-point stroke of Magenta, to make it easier to see:

    3. Now we can see where things are getting ugly. Right after the capital D in Duis and the lower-case l in (de-)lor, the gap opens up. We're going to fix that.

    4. Get your Direct Selection Tool again and click on the inside circle, to see both the circle and the text wrap standoff. Put your cursor on the standoff path so you see the cursor with the diagonal line as shown at below left, then hold down the option/alt key (depending on whether you're working on a Mac or Windows system) so you see the cursor with the plus sign, as shown below right. Click the mouse button to place a new anchor point on the standoff path.

    5. Now click on the anchor point at the bottom of the standoff path to select that anchor point. This shows not only the point is selected, but also the curve handles for that point. Put your cursor on the right curve handle and shift-drag the handle in toward the point and adjust the standoff path until the text lines up something like the illustration below.

    6. Get your Selection Tool. click away from the text and circles to de-select everything, then click on the outside circle and press the delete key to send it to electronic nirvãna.

    By manually applying your imperfect fix, the text wrap now will appear optically correct.

    Pretty spiffy, huh?

    5 replies

    Participant
    June 1, 2025

    Well, it's supposed to be solved. The fact is that is an error. If you do this in older version of InDesign, like CS6, the Text Wrap works perfect on circles, and all shapes. I made other kind of shapes in actual versions of InDesign and in the bottom the text tend to separate from the boundaries. The function should work perfect for what it is, and "correct" the error manually is not solving the problem, is just a solution, and you expend so many time for mistakes that are properly from the program. So, that explanations of "x" height and others are wrong, because it used to work fine, and not now. This is a mistake from the programmers when updating versions. Don't know how to report this anomalies, but somebody should do it. However, thanks for others to share the solutions that takes us a lot of time for something that is wrong from Adobe.

    Anubhav M
    Community Manager
    Community Manager
    June 5, 2025

    Hello @Daviche,

    Could you share more details, like the version of the OS/InDesign currently installed, and a small screen recording of your entire workflow, including the problem encountered, so I can check this with the team?

    Looking forward to hearing from you.

    Anubhav

    Participant
    August 14, 2017

    Thanks, everyone. Now I understand why it's happening, and I just need to decide how much trouble I want to take to fix it.

    Randy Hagan
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    August 14, 2017

    Hi Mark.

    Glad we could help. Could you please mark your question as answered so the moderators will archive this and this thread can be found by others who have the same problem?

    And anytime you have another issue, feel free to come here for help. There are lots of sharp folks here who can usually lend a hand.

    Randy

    Scott Falkner
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    August 13, 2017

    Text wrap doesn’t use the edges of the letters; it uses the entire height of the font. Look at the lowercase e on the penultimate line. the reason it doesn’t touch the path of the text wrap is that there is space above the e in the font’s bounding box. A glyph with the same with but more height would not change the text position. InDesign wasn’t programmed to check the wrap against the position of the paths in each character, just the size of the font’s bounding box, or roughly from the baseline to the cap height.

    Obi-wan Kenobi
    Legend
    August 13, 2017

    Do you like it like this! 

    For those who could doubt, I've duplicated the "red" circle and increase its size to make the limit of the text it wraps more visible (in "grey")!

    … The result is … quiet perfect! 

    I've grouped the 2 circles and now I can play with them! … Reduicing them:

    … or increasing them:

    (^/)

    Barb Binder
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    August 13, 2017

    If you choose Edit > Deselect all can you really see the difference?

    If so—and if you have time on your hands—you can customize the boundary manually with the Pen tool.

    https://indesignsecrets.com/editing-text-wrap-pen-tool.php

    ~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training
    Bill Silbert
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    August 13, 2017

    I had the same result when I tried. I did notice that when I set the Wrap options to Largest Area there was a noticeable movement closer to the circle but still not perfect. Using the direct selection tool to select the bottom point of the circle and moving that a few clicks to the left, while a crude workaround, did actually improve the effect.