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meister2006
Participant
June 24, 2017
Question

Paragraph styles turn text white?

  • June 24, 2017
  • 6 replies
  • 1484 views

Hi all,

I'm encountering a weird problem in InDesign, where text randomly turns white when I apply paragraph styles. At first it only happened when I tried to paste text from a Word document into a text box and then tried to apply a paragraph style, but now it also happens when I switch from one paragraph style to another.

Some more info:

For some reason I can't paste without formatting (the option is also grayed out in the menu), which means text is always highlighted turquoise when it appears in the document. That in itself wouldn't be a problem (although it's odd), but as I mentioned, once I try to apply a paragraph style to it, the whole text simply turns white.

This doesn't appear to be an override, and thus I also can't use the button to clear overrides to get rid of whatever is being applied.

I've tried pasting with CMD+V from Word docs, Google Docs and Scrivener, and I've tried importing text the proper way.

Does anybody know what's happening? Any help would be greatly appreciated. I can also upload a screencast of it if necessary.

This topic has been closed for replies.

6 replies

Participant
August 22, 2024

I had  a similar experience except InDesign kept turning my Paragraph Styles to Yellow. When I double-clicked the Style itself, Black was selected. I had to manually change it. I figured out that for whatever reason, InDesign was defaulting to a Yellow Characer Style that was in my library. I had to choose each Style in Paragraph Styles and at the same time select "none" in Character Styles and it stopped. What got it going is beyond me, but that fixed it!

uniqued_tol
Inspiring
June 25, 2017

Object style [None] and clear override and character style [None]. Finally create text frame

Bill Silbert
Community Expert
Community Expert
June 24, 2017

When you apply the Paragraph Style make sure that you have Shift and Option pressed. This will detach any previous styles that may have been applied.

meister2006
Participant
June 24, 2017

Hi Bill, thanks for the suggestion, unfortunately this option is not available when I try to paste, it's even grayed out in the menu.

Derek Cross
Community Expert
Community Expert
June 24, 2017

Re Steve's excellent suggestion, to save you going through all the ways of trashing your InDesign Preferences, try this;

Close and relaunch InDesign, and IMMEDIATELY hold down Ctrl + Alt + Shift (Windows) or Cmd + Ctrl + Opt + Shift (Mac), and respond in the affirmative to the dialog asking if you really want to replace the preferences. you must be extremely fast on the keyboard (if you don’t see the confirmation prompt, you were too slow),

You may have to do it a couple of times before you get the hang of it!

meister2006
Participant
June 24, 2017

Hi Derek, thanks a lot for the tip, I'll give this a try!

Derek Cross
Community Expert
Community Expert
June 24, 2017

Is there a Character Style applied somewhere?

Steve Werner
Community Expert
Community Expert
June 24, 2017
meister2006
Participant
June 24, 2017

Hi Steve, thanks very much for the suggestion, I'll give this a try!