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danielleo38158037
Participant
November 9, 2022
Question

Grey boxes Indesign 2023

  • November 9, 2022
  • 2 replies
  • 3661 views

My placed files have been replaced with grey boxes with a black cross through the centre. Have played with Display performance and grey boxes still appear. I can't export as a PDF unless I replace every single grey box (about 300 of them). Links are still intact. Any ideas?

2 replies

Steve Werner
Community Expert
Steve WernerCommunity Expert
Community Expert
November 9, 2022

There are three places where Display Performance is set in InDesign. Check all three:

 

(1) Preferences > Display Performance should be set to High Quality (several choices here)

(2) View > Display Performance > High Quality Display

(3) Select an individual image and choose Object > Display Performance > High Quality Display.

Check all three.

    D
    danielleo38158037Author
    Participant
    November 10, 2022

    Thanks Steve. Still showing grey boxes unfortunately. When I attempt to export I get this error message. Is there any way to see cause of the error?

    Steve Werner
    Community Expert
    Steve WernerCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    November 10, 2022

    Another thing to try. There could be corruption in the file which may be fixed by saving as an IDML file. Choose File > Save As > InDesign CS4 or Later [IDML]. Open the IMDL file and try again.

      S
      Community Expert
      Sumo148Community Expert
      Community Expert
      November 9, 2022

      Besides checking your document view settings under View > Display Performance, you can also check your Preferences > Display Performance settings as well. You can adjust the Fast, Typical, High Quality view settings sliders there to determine the exact quality shown. Maybe you have it set to gray out images on Typical or High Quality view by accident. Considering you have ~300 images with the same issue it sounds like a document level setting and not a individual image quality setting set.

       

      You can always reset your preference settings too, to see if that would fix anything.

       

      Assuming it's just a display performance rendering issue in InDesign, the PDF file should still export fine.

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