CHARACTER TAGS - Baby, come back. Where do you go when I close a doc?

[#1]

I mostly have no trouble in applying character tags and getting them to stick but I just noticed this:

I have Paragraph style for the NOTE as shown below. I want to make the hyperlinks appear blue (as they are throughout the document) but also 10 pt and bold (as shown in the first example). I created a "HYPERLINK NOTE" Character tag to do that. It sticks right up until I close the document and then it resets to appear like the second Note. Sometimes I get that popup that asks if I want to retain the Overrides and I've been clicking "Yes" but even when I don't get that message, this character tag disappears.

Any ideas?

[#2]

Hi Meredith:

If you want consistency in formatting, you will want to choose Remove Overrides. This ensures that all text using that format is formatted with the same definition.

I have never seen a character style (tag|format)  go missing, so I'm assuming there is an error in the character style or that the text has some overrides.

Override issue

Once you update the style and remove overrides, the next thing I would do is select that last paragraph in your screen shot and

1. Assign the appropriate paragraph style.
2. Click on Default ¶ Font in the Character catalog.
3. Use the Text Formatting toolbar to confirm that it is using the correct font and size.
4. Highlight the string and reassign the desired character style.
5. Save, close and reopen. Is it working as expected?

Error in character style definition

If that still isn't working, did you create the character style using As Is or did it pick up the initial formatting from the document?

~Barb

[#3]

Thanks. Yes, I've never come across this and it ONLY seems to be with a single character tag.

I tried your solution to Override issues and that didn't work. I'm not sure what you mean in the second section. I created the style in Character Designer to just make this type of text blue instead of black.

What's really weird is that when I click the HYPERLINK or NOTE - HYPERLINK paragraph style (that looks correct) and open Character Designer, the STYLE window is blank. It appears in my Character Catalog but it's like the Character Designer just doesn't recognize this style.

So weird.

[#4]

Hi Meredith:

Are you in a hurry? I’m on vacation this week, but happy to look at your file on Monday.

You can message me a link to the file on dropbox and I’ll take a look Monday morning.

~Barb

[#5]

Aww thanks so much. Unfortunately, what I'm working on can't be sent outside the office. I'll keep tinkering though.

I appreciate you!

Meredith

[#6]

By the way, just as an idea: In case you cannot send out a document due to the confidentiality of the content, you might want to consider "neutralizing" the content:

1. Save your document and close it.
2. Make a copy of the document and name it something like "FileName_debugging.fm". Open this debugging document.
3. (If you are using conditional text, make sure to set all conditions to "show").
4. Open Find/Change.
5. Copy this into the "Find" field: [a-z|A-Z]
6. Select "Regular Expressions"
7. Type "x" into the "Change" field.
8. Click "Change All".

Like this:

This will replace all characters from "a" to "z" (both upper- and lowercase) with "x". You could do the same with numbers if needed (by searching for "[0-9]" and replacing them e.g. with "0").

Finally, save the document.

Your document should be pretty much without any meaningful content and should be therefore secure to send around for debugging purposes. You might want to scroll through the pages visually to make sure, all text and numbers are really "useless" now.

[#7]

Out of curiosity, what does the status bar at the bottom of the Frame window show when you have your cursor within one of those links? Does it look like this graphic?

[#8]

Hi Meredith:

You could always save the file under a new name and then replace the text that’s supposed to be using the character style with dummy text, and then do the same with the text before and after within that same paragraph. Delete everything else before and after that paragraph, (and any proprietary master page and/or reference page content), then save again and message me with a link to the file.

That allows me see the problem text and your formatting but does not let me see the proprietary content. That should be enough to troubleshoot this situation.

No rush. I’ll be in the office on Monday and Tuesday morning, but then out for the rest of next week.

~Barb