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Participant
October 13, 2025
Answered

Problem with hidden character that looks like :

  • October 13, 2025
  • 1 reply
  • 170 views

I'm working with a document which contains a lot of these characters, which can be found with Find/Replace as <FEFF>, but everytime i try to delete any of them the program crashes. Other discussions in this forum referred to it as a text anchor, but there are no hyperlinks on the document, i'm using Indesign 2023.

Correct answer Peter Spier

There's nothing inherent that would cause the crash, so in a case like this I would try exporting the file to .idml and opening that, then saving as a ne .indd with a new name.

1 reply

Peter Spier
Community Expert
Community Expert
October 13, 2025

It's used for a variety of things, including Data Merge field markers

Participant
October 13, 2025

Yeah, could there be any reason why trying to interact with them crashes the program at all? Even linking their text box to a thread causes InDesign to close imediatelly.

Peter Spier
Community Expert
Peter SpierCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
October 13, 2025

There's nothing inherent that would cause the crash, so in a case like this I would try exporting the file to .idml and opening that, then saving as a ne .indd with a new name.