all figures within a document changed by the value of 2

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
March 5, 2024
4 replies
738 views

We areceived a file from our third party designer and suddenly all the figures in the document changed by the value of 2: 31 Dec 2023 became 33 Dec 2025, 98% became 100%, numbers, like for instance, 1000 became 1002, footnote (1) became (3). Every single number in the document went up by 2, No number was left unchanged. Any idea what happened there? A bug or a global change of some sort?

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Bill Silbert

Community Expert

It sounds to me like the third party designer used some sort of script or plugin that has somehow gotten out of control. I would reach out to that designer and find out exactly what their process was in creating the document and if they have some way to stabilize it. At the very least have them export the document as an IDML file and then you open that version with your version of InDesign. If the problem is a corrupted file then that process can remove that corruption.

M

Marta358659809kx9Author

Participating Frequently

The file went to the agnecy many times to be combined with their part of the larger file to produce the final book. There were no issues through the process until the last round. The issue appeared suddenly and worryingly we nearly published that document. This is a very bizzare and yet somewhow automated change, to affect all the numbers in the document. We had all range of numbers updated, footnotes, percentages, dates, tables, charts, any number mentioned in text- everything. If the agency were coming up with answers than I would not be here asking for advice 🙂 I have just spoken to Adobe and the opeartor I spoke to is not aware of a command that can do that in case some global change was actioned in error. We need to establish what caused this in order for this not to happen in future... Maybe somethingw as not compatible? Error with styles? Mac versus PC? Plug in or script sounds intriguing, have you seen such issue before?

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

@Marta358659809kx9

The thing is - changing numbers isn't hard through scripting - as long as those are "text" numbers.

But the clue to the culprit would be in the Footnotes - numbers you see are generated automatically by InDesign - same way as in the numbered lists.

Starting value is controlled by the preferences. So if footnotes has been "renumbered" - something must gone wrong with the IDML. Otherwise, in case of INDD file, script would have to be much more sophisticated than just changing numbers in text.

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

@Marta358659809kx9

Have you SENT this file to him for corrections / editing and now the file is back - or it's a new document - and something went wrong during the transfer of the file?

Is it an IDML file that you've received - or INDD?

M

Marta358659809kx9Author

Participating Frequently

sorry, should have mentioned. This occured in InDesign. 200 page document - all the numbers changed