InDesign hyphenation not working. UNACCEPTABLE!

[Niet beschikbaar]

I have been working on a major book project for more than a year, hundreds of hours of work are involved. Upon opening my document recently I have discovered my text will no longer correctly hyphenate, regardless of whether hyphenation is correctly applied. No hyphenation happening whatsoever. On or off.

A possible solution has been suggested in threads by people having the same issues: copying the text to another frame, applying the [Basic paragraph] style, copying back the text, then reapplying the correct styles. This means manually reworking projects to get hyphenation working again. 

Hyphenation is a basic function of InDesign. Stable typographic behaviour is a core function of this application. It should be rock solid. IT IS NOT.

Professionals are depending on the stability of this software for their livelyhoods, and paying for it. It would be so nice if ADOBE WOULD GET THEIR ACT TOGETHER. This sloppy performance is utterly unacceptable for professional software.

This is not the first time damage has been caused by bugs and instability, these issues are becoming more and more frequent. I DO NOT WANT WORKAROUNDS. I WANT SOFTWARE I CAN DEPEND ON FOR MY WORK.

[Derek Cross]

Presumably you have backup copies of your book file.

You should regularly apply a Safe As to your InDesign document and incrementally rename the file (filename1a.indd, filename1b.indd and so on), this will clean up the crud that can build up and cause corruption.

By the way, this is a user-to-user support forum, you are not addressing Adobe on here.

[Niet beschikbaar]

Hello Derek, I know, I know you‘re right. Adobe is not reading these. I just had to vent. And your tips are good. I already do  that, the versions. Have done for years, My projects have many tens of versions, down to the X.XX, for a myriad of reasons, the least of which is fundamental instability of core instability of documents. 
Ik will go back to a version that stull has hyphenation, and then try to rework the changes. But still, this is an unacceptable level of instability in critical document integrity. 

[Jongware]

Can you provide some more detail? (Possibly relevant, possibly not.)

What version are you opening your files with? Were the files created in an earlier version? Check the Document History if you are not sure. Your InDesign may have been automatically updated (several times, actually, over the course of a year).

Does hyphenation work (correct or otherwise 😛 ) in a brand new document?

Does changing the applied language of the text to any other language change the current hyphenation points? (It should, even if it's the "wrong" hyphenation. Changing the language back again should re-hyphenate the text.)

[Barb Binder]

Yes, correct hyphenation is a requirement, not an option. What hyphenation dictionary are you using? (Prefs > Dictionary)

~Barb

[rob day · Accepted solution]

Have you tried saving the problem document as an IDML and reopening, and if that doesn’t work trashing your preferences and caches?

Can you share an example file via Dropbox or your CC account?

[greiss]

Just make sure that your Language option in the Character panel is as your text.

[HHSDebbie]

...

[Sue Boylan]

Thank you!! I was not getting hyphenation at all. My imported text was all set to Australian english. 

[Marie Agger]

I experienced exactly the same thing just before the deadline on a major project six months ago and am now experiencing the same problem again. It's driving me crazy! I'm an experienced user of InDesign and working with typography and I have tried EVERYTHING suggested in the thread here. Nothing works. Luckily I found a way - I tried moving all the pages from the document over into a new blank document - that solved the problem for me this time.

[HHSDebbie]

...

[EEM.Scott]

In the contents folder the info.plist needs to be reset. We have to do this every once in a while when all hyphenation ceases. This happens on the Mac, primarily after we add and use hyphenation languages not supported out of the box by Indesign. The experts at Indesign worked with me for months to figure this out, but I do not believe they have solved the problem yet. Resources:Dictionaries:Lilo:Linguistics:Providers:Plugins2:AdobeHUNspellPlugin.bundle:Contents:info.plist

[EEM.Scott]

Reinstall Indesign and then keep a copy of this file for the future.

[Atapp]

Fantastic, this worked. Still a problem with InDesign 2025.

[Abhishek Rao]

Hi @Atapp,

Thank you for confirming that the solution worked! If you're still encountering a problem with InDesign 2025, could you please describe the issue in detail? It would be great if you could create a new post with the specifics of the issue, including the version of InDesign you're using, your operating system, and any steps you've already tried. We’ll assist you further from there!

Best,
Abhishek Rao

[Atapp]

I'm using latest version of MacOS and Adobe. I use Swedish language. At home I have an M1 Macbook Pro. At work I have a new Mac Mini M4.

I've seen the problems with hyphneation come and go over the years. It just stops working for a single document. I've been able to fix it by saving to IDML and restart the document that way, but that didn't work yesterday, but your fix did work.

Today I wanted to delete the info.plist in my new Mac just to verify that this fix is stable, but then I actually run into a problem. Now it says that Swedish language is no longer working, so I guess I will have to reinstall InDesign.

[EEM.Scott]

When it quits working then I have to reinstall the original info.plist, but
it is not necessary to reinstall Indesign...unless the original was not
saved in the first place.

We have to switch the plist each time we use a language not native
supported....and then switch back afterwards.


Scott Hayes
EEM Publishing Director

[Abhishek Rao]

Hi @Atapp,

Thanks for the update! I suggest going ahead with reinstalling InDesign to restore the Swedish language functionality.
As @EEM.Scott mentioned, saving a backup of the original 'info.plist' file will help avoid the need for reinstalling InDesign in the future when switching languages.
Additionally, if hyphenation stops working, try switching to a different font to check if the issue is specific to a particular font.

Let us know how it goes, and feel free to reach out if you need further assistance.

Best,
Abhishek Rao