DropCap whin using indent left

Here's the link to the bug to add your vote:

https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601180-adobe-indesign-bugs/suggestions/46056058-hanging-drop-cap-has-wrong-indents-in-2023-v18

I just went to check on this issue on the Bugs page and sure enough, it has come up.

Sooooooo... there's a new preference in v18 under Composition (which is checked by default) which is causing this.

It's being investigated, as the preference was not intended to do this, so it's a bug.

In the meantime, if you uncheck  the "Honor text indents..." the problem goes away. But then, that undoes what the preference is supposed to fix, so that ain't good.

Fun fact: I saved a v18 file with the screwed up alignment as an IDML file and opened it in older versions, and the alignment problem goes away.

This appears to be a bug in v18. It works properly in previous versions. I tried v16 and v17 and could not reproduce the problem. Also, I OPENED a file created in v16 with v18 and the problem goes away, both on the existing text from the saved file and any new text block created.

If you want the drop cap the align with the left margin give the paragraph no first line indent and no left margin. If you want the drop cap to hang outside the margin make the drop cap length two characters, add a space at the beginning of the paragraph before the drop cap, then kern the drop cap into the space.

You might consider making a paragraph style that has 0 indent along with defining the drop cap. If you want the letter to stick out a bit more, apply the Type > Story attribute to the textframe carrying the drop-capped text. Story causes things to outdent a bit in orde to give a better optical feel to the alignment.