Problem with hidden character that looks like :

Forum|Forum|5 months ago
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.

Peter Spier

Community Expert

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

L

Lua CamarottiAuthor

Participant

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

Correct answer

Community Expert

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.

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded