Inspiring

Question

What does this "Text Wrap" dialog apply to?

Forum|Forum|10 months ago
June 11, 2025
5 replies
983 views

I generated a TOC, and anchored it to a paragraph on the first page of my document.

But, unlike every other anchored frame in the doc, the text-wrap options are missing for it. They do not appear in the Properties panel when the TOC's frame is selected. Nor are there any wrapping options in "Anchor Options" for the thing.

After more than one Web search, I finally found instructions to dig up the "Text Wrap" item that's inappropriately buried in the Window menu. While I was able to make the page's text jump the TOC as needed, there is no indication as to what you're setting the text-wrap properties of with this thing. Is it the column? The story? The document?

Thanks for any insight.

How to

Barb Binder

Community Expert

Your are, of course, correct, @Thomas_Calvin ! On closer inspection, I can see that you have a single column and that the paragraph and character styles panel is open from from that single column. That works!

And glad you saved the workspace. If you end up changing it to make it better down the road, you can always save it again, overwriting the original. When I'm setting up a job-based workspace, it often takes me a few tries before I get the one I need to support my workflow.

Workspaces live in a folder on your hard drive, and you can copy them to a new version if you like. You may find this post helpful after the fall update to 2026. https://www.rockymountaintraining.com/adobe-indesign-how-to-copy-your-presets-after-an-update/

Happy weekend to you!

~Barb

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training

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Thomas_CalvinAuthor

Inspiring

Great thinking, Barb. I was going to respond to your post with a question about where these are stored, but decided that was lazy and that I'd do a search on it instead. But... you nailed it.

Good weekend to you too!

Barb Binder

Community Expert

Hi @Thomas_Calvin!

(why does that even exist)

The two-column toolbar is used on smaller, older, low res screens. Without it, on some systems some of the tools are cropped off at the bottom in the one-column view.

You workspace is looking great and I'm going to suggest two additional steps.

The 1st column (aka vertical strip) is sitting next to the 2nd column and text will disappear underneath. Consider docking that 1st column to keep that from happening. Drag the group to the right until your cursor touches the scroll bar. Release the mouse when you see a blue, vertical bar.
Save your workspace!! If you crash or reset prefs, you will lose it and I know you won't enjoy setting it up again. 😉 Once saved you can return to it at any time, using the Workspace list. You can also reset the workspace back to the last time you saved it. When I wrap up a day of production, my InDesign desktop and my desk are both a mess. Luckily. I can clean up my desktop by just resetting my workspace. Wish I had a quick way to clean up my desk!

~Barb

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training

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Thomas_CalvinAuthor

Inspiring

As always, thanks for the time on that, Barb. I think I've already done what you're showing there; the panel I have with paragraph and character styles is already part of the narrow column to its right. I can't drag it around independently the way you show in your screen grab. And I did take your advice and save the layout.

Barb Binder

Community Expert

Hey @Thomas_Calvin:

I hear you about screen space. Most of my students have two or three displays so they have plenty of room for panels. I do a lot of work on my MacBook because I'm an outdoor girl and often outside. This is my preferred laptop workspace (though I have custom versions for specific jobs). It's important for me to have access to my styles panels and pages panels—they are always open.

As for Redefine Styles—it's available in all of the styles panels—Paragraph (shown), Character, Object, Cell and Table, but it is only shown if you have an override (the + next to the file name). Otherwise, you don't need it and it doesn't appear.

And your example of the missing Text wrap icons is a beautiful illustration of what I'm talking about: the Properties panel has the commands that a new user is looking for. A new user is not likely to enable text wrap on a text frame, so it's not there. They will look for it when they have an unassigned frame selected, or a graphics frame so it is. The Properties panel is just meant to get a new user up and running quickly, and as I said, you are well past that point.

Please do keep in mind that one of InDesign's strengths is it's flexibility. I can have one workspace I think is the BEST and you can have one that you think is the BEST and we can still be friends (and get our work done).

~Barb

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training

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Thomas_CalvinAuthor

Inspiring

Thanks for the layout example, Barb. Since it showed that you can move the Pages tab to that left vertical strip, I did that and got rid of the Properties pane and invoked the "Control" strip (AKA toolbar by everyone else).

Then I toggled the tool palette on the left from two columns (why does that even exist) to one. So far I think this exposes all necessary controls.

Barb Binder

Community Expert

Hi @Thomas_Calvin:

I hope you are doing well. Here's my two cents:

The Properties panel was introduced specifically to help new users who want to open InDesign and start using it, but don't want to attend a training class. It's context-sensitive and the idea is to make basic features discoverable to a new user, but is limited primarily to the features that a new user is looking for. At this point you're well beyond that designation..

Most of us who have been using InDesign for a while don't use the Properties panel at all. I know I don't. It's never on my screen and I don't even teach it to my intro students.

Instead, I open my intro classes by explaining panels. I point out that in order not to overwhelm a new user with too many menus and items within the menus, most InDesign functionality is found in panels. I show that the Window menu lists all of the panels alphabetically from Articles to Version History—so Text Wrap is in there with the Ts—and the only digging ever required is when a panel is embedded in a submenu. I also have them display the Control Panel which is context-sensitive like the Properties panel, but has many more options available (including text wrap controls). We wrap up that part of class by creating a custom workspace so that they learn how to design a workspace that supports their workflow and get back to it easily.

Once more thing I mention in all of my InDesign classes is that if you see a button on the Control panel, you can Alt/Opt click it to open the panel with the additional controls.

~Barb

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training

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Thomas_CalvinAuthor

Inspiring

Thanks Barb!

The text-wrap options do appear in the Properties tab, though... but only sometimes. That's a defect. They should either be there or not.

As far as the panels are concerned, I don't have room for them on my screen. I have docked some in the vertical strip to the left of the Properties panel, however. I do find it useful to have the Paragraph-styles panel open along with the Properties tab; I can see and change a lot more information at once.

The "more complete" panels are not, in fact, complete. For example, the "redefine style" button is missing from the Paragraph-styles panel; it's only available in the Properties pane. And for some things, it's missing entirely; namely Cell styles. Screen shot attached.

Also, you need to have the Pages tab available at all times anyway, and it occupies the same screen area as the Properties tab. So I don't how the Properties tab costs any additional space.

Edit: I did find that the Paragraph one at least has "redefine" in a context menu. But not the Cell one, which is probably why I concluded that it wasn't available in any of these panels. The lack of attention to consistency here is pretty infuriating and confounds users' attempts to find functionality; so they conclude that it doesn't exist.