Column content cannot be touched/altered

[Grundoon Groundhog]

I have flowed a Microsoft Word document into Indesign, into a number of pages. Some columns and/or their text cannot be touched. They are not locked. They cannot be selected. They cannot be moved. The text cannot be styled. Clicking the Selection tool or the Type tool does nothing. Deleting the page and reflowing does nothing. Clicking Command and Selection briefly allowed me to select one of the columns, but now that doesn't work either. Nor should it be necessary, should it? Is this a Word problem in the formatting of the original document? Is it a new way Indesign has found to drive me crazy?

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

You have this super-massive inline object blocking access to the text frames. 

Once deleted, the file was fine (as far as selection is concerned). Be careful with copy-and-paste.

[Grundoon Groundhog]

OK, thanks. I'm taking my computer for repair next week; I can't get InDesign to open at this point. I'll try again when I get it back.

[Peter Spier]

I just took a look at the uploaded file and it is indeed strange. I am able to select all ojexts on that spread using the Layers panel, but using the selection tool only the far right text frame on page 9 and the image frame on page 8. When I try to select something the Layers Panel indicates something on the layer is selected, but does not show a selected object. This is not a case of Parent Page objects needing to be overridden, it's a case of file corruption. Checking the file history I can see this file crashed numerous times and was recovered from mini-saves last November, as well as last Monday. The bad news is that an export to IDML does not repair it.

Potentially good news, however, is that moving pages to a new file seems like it does work, though I can't be sure because I don't have your fonts and text has reflowed.

Create a new file with the same document setup settings as the original, but just one page in the file, then go to the Pages panel, right-click on the A-Parent page and rename it something you don't use in your document so when you move pages over it will not get used.

In the corrupt file click the first page, hold down Shift and click the last page to select them all. Right-click and select Move Pages. In the dialog change the dropdown selection to All Pages, change to insert BEFORE page 1 and set the destination to your new Untitled document. Do NOT check the delete pages after moving box.

After tha pages are moved you can delete the renamed Parent Page and the blank last page that used to be Page 1 when the file was created. Save the file with a new name (don't overwrite the other file) and check to see if it is working correctly.

[Grundoon Groundhog]

Thank you. It's something of relief to know it's the file, not me. InDesign requires multiple start ups almost every day which requires multiple force quits, so I'm not surprised. Hopefully my incipient computer repair will solve that problem.

[Peter Spier]

If InDesign is crashing a lot you have some sort of system problem that needs to be addressed -- bad driver, software conflict, permissions, bad memory or bad sectors on the hard disk, who knows. You need to have this really diagnosed.

[Grundoon Groundhog]

Yes, I'm taking my computer in for repair next week.

[Laubender · Accepted solution]

Hi Grundoon Groundhog,

I do not think that your InDesign document is damaged.

Like David Creamer I opened your InDesign document and on that spread with pages 8 to 9 you have two massive anchored frames with gigantic sizes.

By scripting I was able to expand the pasteboard beyond the limits you can go with GUI to 10,000 mm x 10,000 mm.

Then I used the menu command for viewing the whole pasteboard and selected the objects one by one.

Original size of the pasteboard:

Expanded pasteboard. One of the two anchored objects selected:

The other one selected:

Both anchored objects obscure the contents of the spread. No wonder that nothing else could be selected directly in the layout by a simple click. By holding the Ctrl key on Windows I was able to click-select objects stacked behind.

I think, that's all to it…

Remove both anchored frames that are so huge.

And also some tiny ones, see screenshot below, and you are good to go, I think.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

/EDITED

[Grundoon Groundhog]

Thank you. I wondered if the "equations" in the Word document were causing problems, and they apparently are. The other elements are illustrations I placed in graphic boxes; I don't know how they got anchored.