InDesign Newbie seeks answer regarding Cursor Behavior

[marjimsha]

Greetings, Community!  Learning yet another Adobe program, and am stuck regarding cursor, which mysteriously jumps to the very top left of document, and is not easily dislodged.  So far, I have only been able to correct this by Cntrl-Zing my way out of it. Why does this happen, and how do I correct it?  Could not find answer anyway, though I did try.  InDesign is fully updated, and running on Windows 10.  Thank you in advance!

[SJRiegel]

I suspect that this is related to the preference that turns any empty frame into a Text Frame when clicked on with the text cursor. It's on by default; I make sure that it is turned off after each new update.

[marjimsha]

Oddly that solved the problem for a while (I had to turn it off), but now its happening again.  The box remains unchecked. 

[SJRiegel]

It could be that you have a background shape that was already converted to a text box, so clicking on it with the text tool activates it. 

You can fix it by changing the content of the box to Graphic or Unassigned. 

[rob day]

Hi @marjimsha , if you drag out a box when the Type tool is active, the new frame will be a text frame regardless of the preference setting, and the cursor will be inserted.

Also Preferences can be saved with a document, or the application. To change the Type Tool Converts Frames to Text Frames Preference for all new documents, close all documents before unchecking the box—any existing documents that had the box check would remain unchanged.

[marjimsha]

Thank you, and I hope you are right, but how do I exit out of this situation (with my cursor being stuck upper left).  Whenever this happens, I am unable to use text tool or selection tool to correctly position my cursor.  Is there a way to view bounding boxes to see what is going on?  Please excuse the remedial question.  I did try to find out on my own!

[rob day · Accepted solution]

Make sure you are in Normal View—View>Screen Mode>Normal, and you are showing frame edges—View>Extras>Show Frame Edges:

[marjimsha]

Thank you!  Sure enough, there are unneeded boxes galore!