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Answered

InDesign 20.3 — where has the Help search field gone?

Forum|Forum|10 months ago
April 23, 2025
4 replies
2524 views

I have just updated to the latest version (20.3) and, upon pulling down on the Help menu, I couldn't help but notice that the search field that was in there has disappeared.

Why was this removed? What was the rationale behind that? How can we get it back?

I will gladly revert to 20.2 and stay there if this is deliberate.

Correct answer Inélsòre

Upon actually reading their thread, I found that they found a solution in our forums! Apparently this can be caused by misidentification of the locale of InDesign in macOS. I don't know if it will work for you, but it's certainly worth trying.

Incredible, but it works!

I think this is what happened, if anyone has the patience to read it.

I normally use macOS in English locale, even if I am Italian and based in Italy. At a certain point during April 2025, when Apple Intelligence became available in Italian, I switched my macOS locale to Italian. This broke the Search bar in InDesign and in Steinberg Dorico.

In macOS Sequoia 15.4.1, going to System Settings > General > Language & Zone > Applications and adding both InDesign and Dorico to the list while specifying the English language made the search bar reappear.

Dorico's UI language can be changed to several other languages from the app's Preferences. Setting it to Italian, with the macOS locale to Italian, and the app specified to English (impossible to specify it to the macOS default) doesn't show the search bar. I will report it to Steinberg as well.

It seems that different apps within Adobe CC are localised in different ways? That's peculiar, since a coherent method would surely avoid this kind of issues.

Thank you for your help once again!

Bill Silbert

Community Expert

Since some of the responses so far have indicated that they saw the search field (I did as well with version 19.5 on MacOs Sonoma) it seems possible to me that there could be an interface problem here. Missing items from menus and panels can often be fixed by deleting your InDesign cache files. This is not the same as deleting preferences but could be effective in this case.

To delete cache files:

For Macintosh Users: The User Library folder in which InDesign’s cache files are stored is hidden by default on most Macintoshes. To access it make sure that InDesign is closed and click on the desktop to launch a Finder Window (Command-N). With this window in column view follow the path User>Home folder (it’s the folder with an icon that looks like a house—it may have the user’s name rather than “Home”) and click on the Home folder. With the Option Key pressed choose Library from the Finder Go Menu. “Library” will now appear within the Home folder. Within the Library folder find the “Caches” folder. Within the Caches folder find and delete the entire folder “Adobe InDesign”. I find that deleting the InDesign cache folder completely leads to a lasting change.

For Windows Users: On Windows 7 and above the caches files are hidden. To find them go to the Control Panel and open Folder Options and then click the View tab. Then select “Show hidden files and folders” or “Show hidden files, folders or drive options” in Advanced Settings. Then delete (or rename) the folder at the end of this path: C:\Users\[User Name]\AppData\Local\Adobe\InDesign\Version [#]\<Language>\Cache.

I

InélsòreAuthor

Inspiring

I have moved the Adobe InDesign folder outside of the Library onto the Desktop so that I can restore it in case I need it.

Once verified that the library is empty of that, I launched InDesign 2025 (20.3). Sadly, there is no change, the search field is still not there. Thank you for trying.

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

@Inélsòre

Maybe that's a system thing - do you have the same menu in any other applications? And not from Adobe?

Or maybe it's an MacOS app? Like Magnet or Typeface?

L

Laubender

Community Expert

Hi @Inélsòre ,

I see the same. No Search field.

I'm with InDesign 2025 v20.3.0 on macOS Monterrey on a MacBook Pro (M1) from 2021.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Expert )

Steve Werner

Community Expert

I'm running an Apple M1 MacBook Pro running Sequoia 15.4.1. I have no problem seeing the Help menu running v20.3.0.

Steve

L

Laubender

Community Expert

Are you saying that you are using the same machine in two different places and therefore you swap preferences and caches each time?

In any case, it seems that this search field is not something that InDesign draws, rather something that macOS draws in any application that has the standard Help menu. I can see it normally in other apps, including Illustrator (see below), but it has vanished from InDesign alone.

@Inélsòre said: " … Are you saying that you are using the same machine in two different places and therefore you swap preferences and caches each time? "

Exactly.

In my day-job and at home.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Expert )

leo.r

Community Expert

Something is bizarre about this search field. On my desktop Mac Studio, I don't believe it has ever appeared in InDesign. It's not there in InDesign 20.2 and I remember checking it in earlier versions and the search field was never there. That's on Ventura (and, possibly, earlier macOS versions).

However, I now checked my MacBook Pro laptop running Sequoia, and was surprised to discover that the search field does appear in InDesign. It was there in 20.1 and remains there now that I updated to 20.2. 20.3 isn't available here in Canada yet.

I don't have any explanation for this.

leo.r

Community Expert

...and after updating to 20.3, the state of the search field remains unchanged on both machines.

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

Google is better 😉

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