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scottl76236474
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March 16, 2018
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InDesign - can't use font shortcuts to bold in 2018

  • March 16, 2018
  • 1 reply
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Certain font shortcuts do not seem to work in InDesign 2018 for certain styles. Ex. With the system version of Times, you can Cmd+Shift U to underline and can Cmd+Shift I to italicize but you can not Cmd+Shift B to bold. You can go to font attribute pull-down menu and select bold, but the shortcut doesn't work. It seems to be confined to InDesign because if I open a document in Word, for example, and use the same font, all of the shortcuts work for all attributes. It seems to have started when we upgraded to High Sierra and Adobe CC 2018 on our Macs. Has anybody else seen this issue?

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    Correct answer Steve Werner

    Not every font has that association built in to apply Cmd-Shift-B to get Bold. Furthermore, some fonts have more than one bold weight, and there is no way to control which version of bold gets picked, even if there is such a problem.

    I'm in InDesign CC 2018.1 on High Sierra. I just chose the font Times New Roman Regular. If you look at the font in Type > Find Font and turn on Show Info you can get the information. The one I first chose is Type: OpenType TrueType, which I believe is the Microsoft font, version 5.05, and it works fine to switch to Bold.

    When I select Times Regular, a TrueType font, version 13.0d2e19, it's in the System Library. The shortcut is not working on that font.

    InDesign will not embolden a font unless the bold version is available, nor will it switch to another version unless it's built into the font.

    You're correct that Word appears to be emboldening it when you use the shortcut on the system Times font.

    I doubt that there's much you can do about it, however, unfortunately except to choose a different version of Times. As I said the Microsoft Office Times works.

    1 reply

    Steve Werner
    Community Expert
    Steve WernerCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
    Community Expert
    March 16, 2018

    Not every font has that association built in to apply Cmd-Shift-B to get Bold. Furthermore, some fonts have more than one bold weight, and there is no way to control which version of bold gets picked, even if there is such a problem.

    I'm in InDesign CC 2018.1 on High Sierra. I just chose the font Times New Roman Regular. If you look at the font in Type > Find Font and turn on Show Info you can get the information. The one I first chose is Type: OpenType TrueType, which I believe is the Microsoft font, version 5.05, and it works fine to switch to Bold.

    When I select Times Regular, a TrueType font, version 13.0d2e19, it's in the System Library. The shortcut is not working on that font.

    InDesign will not embolden a font unless the bold version is available, nor will it switch to another version unless it's built into the font.

    You're correct that Word appears to be emboldening it when you use the shortcut on the system Times font.

    I doubt that there's much you can do about it, however, unfortunately except to choose a different version of Times. As I said the Microsoft Office Times works.

    Steve Werner
    Community Expert
    Steve WernerCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    March 16, 2018

    PS: A better approach to to learn to use character and paragraph styles to apply your font changes.

    If you have an extended keyboard, you can create a keyboard shortcut for styles in InDesign. If not, you can use Quick Apply, which is what I use on my Mac laptop.

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