InDesign duplicating paragraph styles

[yeshwanth28347475zef5]

Does anyone know how to keep InDesign from duplicating paragraph styles when I import a story/text fThe InDesign  paragraph style are named exactly the same but when it imports into InDesign it duplicates it and puts it at the bottom of my paragraph styles and links to that style instead of the one that was already in InDesign

[Scott Falkner]

What type of file are you importing? Have you tried using Import Options? When you place the file you can turn on Show Import Options or hold SHift when you click Open to access import options. There you will have more control over how styles are imported and how the program handles conflicts.

[Willi Adelberger]

If both documents have the same style names, imported text will adapt the style from the host document, if they are others, you are asked how to handle them. Is there not such a question.

It is impossible to have the same name twice in the same name.

• How do you import text in which file type?
• Please check, if the file names a really the same. 
• Are the fie names in a folder?
• Are some styles in caps and the duplicates not?
• Is a space in the name at the end of one style in the other style not?

If you have technical problems with a document export both as IDML, and open the IDML and save it on the very same place.

• You did not get any question?

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com · Accepted solution]

Unfortunately, I can confirm that this is a serious bug in InDesign beginning with version 18.x (2023) on the Windows platform. I haven't heard about it being a problem on Macs.

Regardless of how the import options are set when importing a styled Word document, Style Mapping isn't working correctly.

Examples:

• When mapping Normal (from MS Word) to My Body Text (in InDesign), Normal is still imported into the paragraph styles panel and applied to the text.
• When Heading 1 (from MS Word) is mapped to Heading 1 (in InDesign), the Styles panel will show two Heading 1 styles with the exact same name but different settings.
• Any Word style that is mapped to InDesign's [Basic Paragraph] with produce two [Basic Paragraph] styles in the panel. This is a real PITA because Adobe had fixed the ages-long problem with [Basic Paragraph] and it worked fine on the Windows platform for since around version 17. Now it's totally broken.
• Using the Map Styles function crashes InDesign about 90% of the time, especially when either [Basic Paragraph], [New Paragraph Style], or New Paragraph Style are selected.
• And the Style Mapping Presets crash InDesign, too. Mine is stuck on a Preset from a client's project, but when selecting either another Preset or setting it to None, InDesign crashes.

Other style problems happen when formatted text is copied from one INDD file into another. There's no warning pop-up or controls about how to handle incoming styles, so all of the incoming styles are duplicated at the bottom of the Paragraph Styles panel using the exact style name that's already in the destination file but having the settings of the incoming version.

It's a mess. What worked fairly seamlessly for decades has now become totally unusable on Windows. We've regressed backwards 20 years.

[Laubender]

Hi @yeshwanth28347475zef5 ,

could you provide an empty InDesign document with the duplicated paragraph styles?

I'd like to see into the issue, because up to now I was not aware that duplicated styles with the same name could exist in the root of the paragraph styles panel ( or in a specific paragraph styles group ).

Thanks,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Expert )