InDesign 2020 / How to get rid of multiple unused text boxes

[saxtonstudio]

In a 350 page book, I had to change page masters a lot when edits came in causing text to reflow. And quite often while applying the new master, a new (blank) text box would be placed underneath the text already in the document. If I caught it, I'd just delete that now extra (and empty) text box, but I know there are a lot of them just sitting there under the text boxes that contain the book's content.

So:

A. Is there a way to find and delete all those unused text boxes?

B. Should I just leave them (They aren't causing any problems... it just seems weird / possibly a bad idea to have them sitting there...)

C. How to avoid this is in the future.

[Joel Cherney]

Well! Item A is easily addressed by a script, like the ones posted here at CreativePro. I would answer B for my own purposes by wondering if anyone (including me!) was ever going to open that INDD ever again, for another round of revisions, or conversion to epub, or really any reason whatsoever. In any case where I'd need to make further adjustments or revisions, I'd try to clean up after myself. 

I don't know how to answer your question C, however. I think that's most likely a Primary Text Frame? That's all I have, if I'm right you'd go to that parent page and delete the primary text frame there, so it doesn't get reintroduced when you reapply your parent page. Just a guess, though, I'm really only here to post a link to that (really useful) empty frame management script. 

[Laubender]

Hi Saxtonstudio,

to answer:

"A. Is there a way to find and delete all those unused text boxes?"

Open your Layers panel and inspect all objects on the active spread.

The text frames that have no contents will be listed with their generic names.

Of course unless you did not rename a frame.

In my German InDesign this name is <Textrahmen>.

For an English version this could be <Textframe> or perhaps <Text Frame> ?

However if the generic name of the frame is typed in as contents of the frame you cannot see the difference in the Layers panel:

"B. Should I just leave them (They aren't causing any problems... it just seems weird / possibly a bad idea to have them sitting there...)"

Perhaps remove them if you re-visit the spreads for editing purposes later.

"C. How to avoid this is in the future."

Well, one thing you could do is changing InDesign's preferences.

Preferences > Type > [ ] Type Tool Converts Frames to Text Frames

Turn that option off which is checked by default.

That may not the cause of your empty text frames, but it also a thing you could do.

See Joel's answer above.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Professional )

[saxtonstudio]

Thanks! I was hoping there'd be a way to find them without going spread by spread, but I can definitely see the extra text frames in the layers panels and delete them, which is good.

As for the new/empty text boxes coming in when applying a new master, just if you're interested, I believe I've noticed it happens when I select a page and choose "apply master" from the page window's dropdown options, but not if I drag a master TO a page. Who knows why!

[Laubender]

"…I believe I've noticed it happens when I select a page and choose "apply master" from the page window's dropdown options, but not if I drag a master TO a page."

Thank you for this observation! Could be a bug.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Professional )