Entire book text gone after Parent Change

[Gregor5FC4]

Hi all, 

I had an entire book set in Indesign with approx 340 pages. I applied a new parent to the first page and entered a page break to the following text; so the header would stand alone. Unfortunately, I saved at that point, and only realised later that my entire body text (after the page break) had disappeared. At the same time, strangely the total page count of the document has doubled to almost 700. The file still has 70MB. My hope is that the body text is still there - but I somehow made it disappear by messing with the Parent page AND adding a page break? Thanks for any help possible! 

[Barb Binder · Accepted solution]

Yes, I suspect it is still there, but Keep Options (including page breaks) is not allowing it to show up. You will feel better if you click in a text frame and choose Edit > Edit in Story Editor. After you see the content, close Story Editor, take a deep breath and consider the next steps.

1. Can you choose undo multiple times to get back to where the content was visible? (You can undo after saving).
2. Are you using styles, or manual formatting?
3. How did you add the Page Break, exactly?
4. Can you return to Story Editor, click on a paragarph and choose Opt+Cmd+K or Alt+Ctrl+K and share a screen shot of your Keep Options?

~Barb

[Gregor5FC4]

Thanks, Barb. This is a great feature I did not know about. Unfortunately, the Story Editor only shows the Heading below which I had set the page break. If I go to the empty pages further down and click into their text empty field, still only the text of the header shows up. -- But then there is suddenly another 350 pages at the end of my document, and for these I cannot even click into a text field? It seems as if it has disappeared and pages are completely blank...

[Gregor5FC4]

Maybe these help. They show the parent spread, as well as the Story Editor.

[Gregor5FC4]

Also to mention, I still have the book as Word.doc. If this InDesign file is now corrupted or I messed it up, I paid a whole day of work for it, but not the entire book, luckily...

[Robert Tkaczyk]

Looks like it's gone 😞

Can you share it for further investigation? 

[Barb Binder]

I'm still not convinced it is gone, it would be helpful to see the first screen shot with Type > Show Hidden Characters enabled.

And are you comfortable sharing the file? You can put it on dropbox and share a link here (public) or message it to me (private) by clicking my avatar above this response and selecting message. 

~Barb

[Robert Tkaczyk · Accepted solution]

If the whole text been in the same thread / story as the main title shown on screenshots - then it is unfortunately gone...

Unless somehow first TextFrame got duplicated... so the original file would be needed to investigate.

[Gregor5FC4 · Accepted solution]

Just a huge Thank You again, Barb. Your advise here has been amazing! It turned out the text was lost indeed, and I have reset all of it over the weekend. It turned out better than before. So fate just wanted me to complete a better version of the layout and font-setting, I guess... 🙂 Thanks so much!

[Barb Binder]

I'm always happy to help, @Gregor5FC4. And so glad to hear you are back on track.

~Barb