Layer panel refresh when switching documents

Forum|Forum|1 month ago
May 12, 2026
4 replies
79 views

When I need to see the stacking order of objects in a given layer on the Layers panel, I click these little arrows (“disclosure triangles,” according to the docs) to expand the layer. If I want to compare the stacking order of a given layer in two different INDD documents, I’d expect to be able to expand the layer in both documents and control-tab between the two INDDs to compare. However, I find that control-tabbing from document to document refreshes some or all (???) of the exposed tree in the Layers panel, and collapses what I’ve expanded. I’ve seen the same behavior when I’ve been trying to compare bookmarks in two INDDs - leaving the document closes all of the expanded sub-bookmarks.

Is this something buggy about my install, or is this typical for v21? I can’t recall ever having encountered this behavior, but it’s not a task that my typical workflow would require me to perform. So maybe it’s been this way all along, and I haven’t noticed?

I added the caveat “some or all” to my explanation above, as I found that when I made a dummy document to do a quick screencap of the issue, my “group” sublayer seems to be willing to stay visible when I switch between documents:

Joel Cherney

Author

Community Expert

Some of my retired machines are inoperable right now, so I can only verify that it didn’t work this way in CS 5.5 on Windows 7. Must have changed at some point in the versions between 7.5 and 19.5? At any rate, I searched the Uservoice, and found that someone has already posted a bug report regarding this issue:

https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601180-adobe-indesign-bugs/suggestions/49435007-layers-panel-active-layer-not-active-and-not-scrol

Abhishek Rao

Community Manager

Hi @Joel Cherney,

Thanks again for confirming the behavior and for sharing the UserVoice link. I’m currently checking this further with the product team to better understand whether this is an intended limitation or something that needs to be tracked as a bug.

I’ll share an update here as soon as I have more information.

Thanks,
Abhishek

Joel Cherney

Author

Community Expert

Many thanks, Abhishek. I have to say, though, that as I look at it, I’m thinking that there is a zero-percent chance that it’s an intended limitation. Here’s a little screencap of me control-tabbing through many languages of this Medicare brochure. The screencap starts with Korean, and as I make my way through the translations, control-tabbing along, I find that when I get to Punjabi, it’s closed. More interesting, when I shift-control-tab to back up to languages whose sub-bookmarks had just been expanded, they’re now closed!

I don’t think that this is issue is of particularly high importance, really, but I’m pretty sure that it’s not functioning as designed. Capturing this also revealed a completely separate bug, but I’ll give that one its own thread, and its own Uservoice post.

Abhishek Rao

Community Manager

Hi @Joel Cherney,

Thanks for pointing this out and for sharing the detailed observations. I tested the same workflow on InDesign versions 19.5.5, 20.5.3, and 21.3, and the behavior was consistent for me across all of them. Based on this, it does not appear to be a bug specific to your installation.

That said, I completely understand how having the Layers panel retain its expanded and collapsed state separately for each document would be very helpful for workflows like yours, and I apologize that this functionality is not currently available.

I’d recommend creating a UserVoice feature request for this here:
https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601021-adobe-indesign-feature-requests

Adding your feedback there will help us prioritize the request. Please do share the UserVoice link back here in the thread as well so others experiencing the same limitation can upvote it too. Once you’ve created it, I’ll also take it further with the product team from my end.

Thanks again for bringing this up.

Abhishek

E

Eugene Tyson

Community Expert

Strange! Definitely work bringing up in the UserVoice.

Sounds like a script to compare the layer and tree structure might be an option.