How to Fix Phantom Paragraph Styles Skipping in Find Search?

[Margaret5EDF]

I have a document that has a paragraph style "Caption" that I use for Table titles. In the document, I have Table 1, Table 2, Table 14, 15, 16, 17, 21, 22, and Table 23. I don't know why this paragraph is skipping numbers 3-13, and 18-20. If I open the Find window and start a search for paragraph type "Caption", starting at the beginning of the document, it goes to:

<Find> -> goes to and selects text of Table 1 title

<Find> -> goes to and selects text of Table 2 title

<Finds #3-13> -> Table 2 title deselected but but navigation stays on the same page

<Find #14> -> goes to and selects text of Table 14 title

<Find #15> -> goes to and selects text of Table 15 title

<Find #16> -> goes to and selects text of Table 16 title

<Find #17> -> goes to and selects text of Table 17 title

<Find #18-20> -> deselects Table 17 text and navigation stays on the same page

<Find #22> - goes to and selects text of Table 22 title

<Find #23> -> goes to and selects text of Table 22 title

I've made sure that all frames are deselected before I run "Find." My find is only for the style Caption and all the other fields are cleared out. I do not have any hidden, conditional text, and my preflight panel is set to report overset text, and I don't have any overset text errors.  Regarding conditional text, I did not set up any for this document and don't actually know how to use it. But I opened the Conditional Text window and it seems like I don't have any. 

I have shut down InDesign, reseting Preferences to Default, restarted InDesign, opened this again, with the same result.

It seems like I have some phantom Caption styles that the Find results can't display. Please Help!!!

<Title renamed by MOD>

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

Can you show a screen shot of your find/change dialog box?

Did you save the file as IDML and reopen in InDesign?

[Barb Binder]

Hi @Margaret5EDF:

Or if you are comfortable sharing the file, we can take a look. You can put it on a file sharing server like dropbox and post the link here (public) or message me directly (private). There's likely an straightforward solution but with seeing the file, it may take a while to figure it out. 

~Barb

[Eugene Tyson]

Easy way to find out if it's hidden

Duplicate your document to test on

Select all the text and then Delete all the text

Try doing the find - if it finds the text it's hidden.

If it doesn't find it - try deleting in portions and then find

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If a document is not behaving well then try 

File>Export 

Choose IDML

Open the IDML in InDesign
Save the file as a new InDesign file with a new name
See if the issue persists.

[Margaret5EDF · Accepted solution]

Thank you. This problem went away when the new version of InDesign came out. The next time I opened the file all my Table Captions were numbered consecutively. But I will keep your recommendations in mind.