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Participant
February 13, 2023
Question

InDesign adds automatically a space within a number

  • February 13, 2023
  • 5 replies
  • 2928 views

In a text I neeed to write the number 1123. InDesign automatically writes 1 123, adding a space between the first two digits, no matter how often I delete the space. Presumeably it wants to separate the thousands from the hundreds. Is there a possibility to stop this automatism?

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5 replies

Scott Falkner
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 14, 2023

Is this happening for every first two digits in a four digit sequence or only when there are two ones next to each other? I suspect the font you are using, like most fonts, uses uniform spacing for numbers, also called Tabular Lining. This means each digit takes up the same amount of space which makes it easy to align numbers in a table. If you have two 1s next to each other then there will appear to be extra space between them.

James Gifford—NitroPress
Legend
February 14, 2023

I'm betting on this, but we haven't seen an actual screenshot or file to either verify the guesses or help guide further ones.

 

Certain fonts do have spacing issues, especially between 1's and other figures.

 

The OP needs to identify the font, provide a quick screenshot or a sample file, or both for any further answers to help much. But I'd bet this (tabular spacing) is the cause.

 

Peter Spier
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 16, 2023

Dear community,

Thank you very much for your enthusiasm to help. The discussion made it clear to think over the problem a while and to look for more experience. I could sort out the problem somehow, in that it needs to be split in two parts. The first part is misleading. It only looks like the issue is the recurring appearance of the unwanted space between two digits. As more recent experience showed, the issue is that the program does not keep your changes properly when several very similar files are open at the same time. Working with another "cluster" of open files, I changed a line in file 1, jumped to file 2 changing the same line, jumped to file 3 changing the same line, jumped back to file 1. Suprise, the line in file 1 had jumped back to the previous version.

Back to the unwanted space. It was the same situation, just affecting a space, which returned after deleting it in several other files at the same spot.

At any rate, I will avoid to have similar files simultaneously open and editing. Open, edit, save, and close a file every time is slow but save. 

P.S.: You might ask why this guy works with very similar open files. I am in the music business and need to edit orchestra parts from time to time. The parts are often just one page, with a one-page *.svg graphics, different for each part, and the recurring text on every part is impressum stuff in a frame.


You have some very unusual problem on your system if changes to a file are reverting without your intervention. This is NOT normal behavior and I've never seen itr reported before. That is likely to take some sleuthing to untangle.

We can more easily figure out the unwanted space problem if you will give us some help. Please, at the very least, post a screen capture of the number with the extra space as it is entered, with invisible characters showing, and tell us the font in use. Also, do you see this behavior with any other digits, or when two 1s are typed together in any other postions? I suspect James may be correct that you are using tabular figures rather than proportional figures, and that may or may not be an option in your font.

Robert at ID-Tasker
Legend
February 14, 2023

Someone added this number to Autocorrect ??

 

 

Willi Adelberger
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 13, 2023

Kannst du uns eine Beispieldatei zukommen lassen? Ich vermute, dass eine GREP-Formatierung dahinter liegt.

Peter Kahrel
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 13, 2023

It's possible that there's a GREP style in your paragraph style that adds the space. Can you check that?

Peter Spier
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 13, 2023

Ummm.....

A grep style coiuld add tracking, but not an actual deletable space.

 

Without seeing a sample file, or at the very least a screen capture with invisibles showing, we're just spinning our wheels speculating.

Peter Kahrel
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 14, 2023

A grep style could add tracking, but not an actual deletable space.

 

Yes, I meant 'create space by tracking'.

Peter Spier
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 13, 2023

Can you share a sample file where this happens, please? To the best of my knowledge InDesign has no sort of automatic number formating ability beyond possibly some auto-correct entry which would be number-specific..

OraceomioAuthor
Participant
February 13, 2023

It is a zip code on an impressum page. And the bug happens in every file, no matter on a regular page or on a template page.