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Participant
Oct 13, 2025 4:35 PM UTC
Answered

Problem with hidden character that looks like :

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.

Peter Spier
Peter SpierCorrect answer
Community Expert
Oct 13, 2025 6:08 PM UTC

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.

5 replies

Peter Spier
Community Expert
Community Expert
Oct 13, 2025 5:06 PM UTC

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

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Participant
Oct 13, 2025 6:01 PM UTC

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.

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Peter Spier
Community Expert
Peter SpierCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
Oct 13, 2025 6:08 PM UTC

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.

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