Guides do not get deleted when they should

[Inélsòre]

I'm trying to change my guides on a spread. 

Going to Layout > Create Guides, then setting some up and checking the Remove Existing Ruler Guides has no effect.

Same thing for going to View > Grids & Guides > Delete All Guides on Spread. No effect at all.

I'm using InDesign 18.0 (2023).

What can I do?

[Jens Trost]

Hi there,
the guides are probably on a parent spread.
Go to the pages panel and click through the parent pages on the top half and check for the guides there.
Also make sure your layers in the layers panel are not locked.
If you are on a parent page and have the layer(s) unlocked the menu actions should work.

[Inélsòre]

Sorry, I had to take back the Correct Answer.

Sadly, even in the Parent Page, creating new Guides with Remove Existing Guides checkes is not removing the old ones.

What should I do?

[Willi Adelberger]

Override those guides as you would do with any other object.

[Inélsòre]

But then there is a problem in this dialogue if the option to Remove Existing guides doesn't work. 

Is it a bug ?

 

[Willi Adelberger]

No, as these guides are NOT on that page, but on its master/parent.

[Inélsòre]

Maybe I wasn't clear: I removed the "correct answer" mark because trying to use this dialog IN the parent page didn't remove them either. So, they don't get removed neither in the child page (expected) NOR in the parent page (not expected). 

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

Just a guess, since I'm not seeing what your page looks like, you might be trying to remove margin and column guides that are part of the page setup. The remove guides command you are using only works on guides you've created separately from those main margin and column guides.

[Inélsòre]

Nope! 

Here's what I've done, on a normal page with 9x12in size, a margin of 0.5in.

I created a 12 columns 12 rows grid with 0in gutter based on margins.

Realising this was not what I wanted to do, I repeated the process but this time checked based on page and also checked "remove existing guides". 

This resulted in two sets of guides being present instead of the page-based ones removing the margin-based ones.

[Luke Jennings3]

Are the guides on a locked layer?

[Jens Trost]

Can you maybe share the document? Since the guides are the problem you can pretty much remove everything else content wise.

[Inélsòre]

I think I have discovered what the problem is: when you set new guides, the most important parameter seems to be their being related to either margins or page. That is, you can have both, in different colours, gutter, amount, at the same time. 

When you check the "Erase previous guides", it applies only to guides of the element (margin or page) you are relating them to. So, if I created 10 guides relative to margins and what I wanted was 10 guides relative to page edges, I first need to set the margins guides to 0, with the erase existing guides checked, and then create new ones with the radio button set on pages. 

Thanks to Brad @ Roaring Mouse for triggering the correct mindset in me with his comment!