Hidden characters visual problem in Story Editor

[Sesamme]

When I turn on Show Hidden Cahracters while in Story Editor, I see a lot of grey overlapping symbols and it's impossible to work really like that. I thought Story Editor is supposed to make basic formatting easier? Can I adjust this somehow?

thanks 

[Joel Cherney]

That's... odd. I don't think that it is displaying as it ought to. I mean, I'm over here working on a Russian layout myself, and it doesn't look like that! I've seen a few posts here recently about problems with the font used internally by InDesign to display those hidden characters, which all seemed to be resolved by the user resetting their preferences. That may be your first stop.

If that doesn't work, do you see hidden characters in those places when you're not in the Story Editor? Are those legitimate hidden characters failing to display? Or something else?

[Sesamme]

I tried resetting all the prefs and changing default display font, etc - nothing helped. Other users in this thread confirmed this bug with similar OS and InDesign version combination.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

The grey boxes are usually the symptom of missing glyphs. I would suggest changing your default font in Story Editor to another one that supports the language and see if it clears up the issue.

[Sesamme]

tried that - didn't help, thanks

[Laubender]

Hi Sesamme,

this once was a bug with an older version of InDesign. Only the MacOs version of it.

What could perhaps help:

[1] Move all pages to a new document.

[2] Open the document under InDesign on Windows.

Save As to a new name and move the file back to the Mac.

Would like to test this with one of your sample InDesign documents.

I'm on Windows 10 where the issue does not exist.

[3] Trash InDesign cache and preferences.

You may find a solution here:

First character of story editor and Notes panel displays incorrectly
Document Geek, Nov 07, 2017
https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/first-character-of-story-editor-and-notes-panel-...

Weird Character Overlay of first character of each line in the Notes Panel and Story Editor
Document Geek, May 13, 2022

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/weird-character-overlay-of-first-character-of-ea...

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Professional )

[Laubender]

Below two screenshots from that old version 13.0.1 on a Mac from November 2017.

The Notes panel is showing the issue:

The same document from 2017 with the Story Editor open. Also watch out for the table cells:

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Professional )

[Sesamme]

Yes - it looks like the same bug.

Thanks for the advice, but going through Windows at this point is too much hassle for this - I can easily edit it in the normal edit view, but I will try it when I get to my Windows machine

[Laubender]

Hi Sesamme,

in the meanwhile a had the chance to get an affected document from a Mac.

Saved it in various ways, also did the IDML round-tour on my Windows 10 machine.

Result: It did not help!

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Professional )

[Sesamme]

thanks for checking!

[Sesamme]

but do you get this also on Windows or is it only on Mac?

[Laubender]

Hi Sesamme,

my Windows version of InDesign does NOT show the issue.

This is clearly a Mac version problem, only!

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Professional )

[Sesamme · Accepted solution]

You are right. I just checked and on Windows it's Ok, but on Windows I work with a later version of InDesign. Anyway - I will have to upgrade my Mac OS in a month, then I will check again with the updated version. thanks for checking