InDesign Text Effects NOT Working (Windows 11)

[YESNT]

Hi there - is there any working InDesign version for Windows 11 at all?

I have tried all available CC versions between v17.0 and the most recent update inside 2023 but I run into pretty much exactly the same issues in any version:

1) text elements with effects applied will display strange strike-thru lines which disappear and re-appear if I scroll the affected page in and out of the viewable area.

2) but much worse: applied text effects will only show in active screen mode but never translate into any alternative screen mode selected e.g.  when typically switching from NORMAL to PREVIEW the effects show incorrectly as if offset and with added thickness -> please see attached images. This also happens the other way around: when working in preview mode, applying effects and then switching to normal mode.

Further, v17.0 is the most stable in that regard. With later versions applying text effects is sometimes not possible and the whole process is randomly unpredictable.

This deems the program near unusable for me! Can anyone from Adobe please help? Or does anyone in the community have suggestions?

Many thanks in advance.

MJ

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

This all sounds more like a system-specific display issue than anything to do with InDesign itself; I'm on Win11 and have never seen this behavior in any version through (currently) 18.0.

Do the faulty renderings print or export to PDF, or are they only seen when scrolling your display?

Obvious question: have you updated your video drivers to the latest from the card manufacturer's site? Relying on Windows updates for video drivers can cause compatibility issues. What actual hardware (system and video) are you using?

[YESNT]

Hi James - thanks for your reply! 

I work on a fresh system i.e. I've reset most components and did a brand new clean install of Windows - just to be sure. I also ran the latest Nvidia Studio driver update today. I'm on Windows 11 latest update and followed the compatibility notes from https://helpx.adobe.com/download-install/kb/windows-11.html

I use a 12th gen Intel processor, 64GB RAM and a RTX 3070ti, paired with nvme m.2 pcie 4.0 drives, all on a pcie 5.0 ready motherboard. Generally my system is rock solid and I have no issues in video editing or 3D production. It's just terrible in InDesign when I use effects on text or other objects.  

In regards of the issues I listed earlier,  the horizontal lines are the most forgiving part as these only affect the displaying of the pages but not the e.g. png exports. The issue that arises when switching screen modes on the other hand is absolutely awful to work with. That is really my main concern;

* * * 2) but much worse: applied text effects will only show in active screen mode but never translate into any alternative screen mode selected e.g.  when typically switching from NORMAL to PREVIEW the effects show incorrectly as if offset and with added thickness -> please see attached images. This also happens the other way around: when working in preview mode, applying effects and then switching to normal mode.

Further, v17.0 is the most stable in that regard. With later versions applying text effects is sometimes not possible and the whole process is randomly unpredictable. * * *

Any ideas or suggestions are much appreciated - this is driving me crazy 🙂

[YESNT]

Also, since you mentioned PDF behaviour; 

The PDF export looks correct on first open but on first zoom it looks corrupted, then on second zoom ok again and breaks on the next, so basically every other zoom level breaks. I attached images for reference.

All in all many awkward scenarios exclusive to InDesign related tasks.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Since this is definitely not a software/general problem, it must be something specific to your system or workflow. A remote possibility is a corrupted cache or preferences, which can cause all kinds of weird UI  and display issues. Try clearing your cache and then resetting ID's preferences; the instructions for doing so are here.

Something else that it might be, although rare, is a bad font. We just resolved a document issue in which Charter font, a longtime standby, turns out to have more than one corrupted version out there. The jumping between zooms makes me think it might be a related issue (bad font hinting).

Does this occur with a variety of fonts, and what font are you seeing this problem with?

[YESNT]

Thank you so much - a glimmer of hope 🙂

Before I proceed through the trouble shooting list though, I can confirm that the effects related issues as well as those strike thru lines occur with any font (I only used comic sans to show a random example of this behaviour)

+ I can also confirm now that having more than two pages with text that has effects applied results in incorrectly displayed effects across all pages in all screen modes i.e. like on the second image attached to my original post. It seems to boil down to the outer glow defaulting to 180 degrees.

OK, I will go through the list now and report back - hopefully we'll have a documented working solution here!

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Another cause could be some other app or utility. You might look through any system utilities or "helpers" or the like, and disable them to see if they're having an unintended effect on ID's display modes. Even things as benign as pop-up notes or hardware setting utilities can trip more sophisticated apps' operation.

It might even be worth booting up in Safe mode and see how ID behaves.

[YESNT]

Sooo ... I've done it all 🙂 

All the guides to re-sets and clean-ups, trimmed my PC down to barebones with only CC installed and the behaviour did not change.

Booting into Safe Mode provided more clarity: it's 100% an InDesign BUG as the problem with effects becomes much more obvious.

Even in v17.0 the effects just won't display correctly inside the working document and it is impossible to control them because the combination of any transparency dependent effects will break the process. While shadows can be controlled at first, adding any other effect will break the preview.

The handles/dials/parameter inputs inside the Outer Glow tab for instance seem to only further affect/adjust the Drop Shadow effect (at least visually to the user) but not the Outer Glow itself.

Bottom line: InDesign effects don't work at all in Safe Mode, so I can rule out my GPU or other apps, which probably must be boiling down to some awkward conflict triangle between InDesign, CC and Windows 11. 

Only a net of tangerines made this problem better in the end :)))) And I switched to Illustrator for now for effects based typographic work. Altho I must say, I've always loved working in InDesign on type related tasks - it's just so perfect for it ... welp, not right now sadly, at least not for me 😞

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

This is very odd; I suspect you'd have to hunt through every hardware, driver and OS setting on the system to find the cause. If clearing the cache and preferences didn't fix it... I'm sure stumped.

It might be worth working with Adobe Support to resolve it; you may have found a real glitch in the code that's affecting other users.

[YESNT]

Yes, I did pretty much a clean install again so it must be some semi-rare bug 😞 InDesign sometimes even behaves strange at start-up and opens in a super-wide window so that half of it overruns the screen and it does that whenever I exit the full window mode but that is a minor glitch in comparison (still annoying of course).

BTW I realized that those strange lines are somewhat related to the baseline grid bleeding thru but hiding it doesn't help. So, it's bugs bugs bugs all over ... 

Thanks for the suggestion to escalate to the Support Team - I need to see how to get in touch with them... will do this for sure. Wish me luck 🙂

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

What kind of monitor are you running? Is there a virtual monitor setup that might be confusing ID at startup? If you have fancy-dancy monitor or desktop setup, trying reducing it to a simpler configuration to see if that cures the problem. (I've runs some very complex setups and currently have a 4K hovering over a 5K; I just expect some programs to freak out when trying to figure out display size, resolution, etc.)

[YESNT]

I've only connected my sRGB 4K BenQ monitor for now (the wide gamut Dell is resting on the side hehe) so no major concoctions here :))) I'm connected via a mini Display Port cable that came with the monitor. I'm also on factory settings right now and tried 100% native scaling just to be safe and it's all the same.

Reg Adobe Support - is there a dedicated page / link where I can initiate a chat? I keep landing on those guided index pages for all kinds of FAQs but no phone number, e-mail or chat link in sight : /

[YESNT]

The 'Contact' button from the main page just turns grey and then nothing 😄 ... whatever have I done to deserve this :(((( 
omg... haha.

[Mike Witherell]

Does this happen in one document or in any document?

[YESNT]

In any document. Old, new, fresh set up ... all the same 😞

[Mike Witherell]

What happens if you move the document to a completely different and less-exotic computer?

[YESNT]

I should have mentioned that aspect as well! Yes, my friend at a studio does not have any trouble. I'm in home office at the moment but my friend checked on mac and pc and no trouble there. He's still on windows 10 on his pc though.

[Mike Witherell]

Could it be related to a corrupt font?

[YESNT]

I'd think very unlikely, unless it's any of the default Windows 11 fonts. I tested the behaviour on vanilla Windows and in Safe Mode and it's even worse in Safe Mode where v17.0, which is so far the 'best behaved' version, acts as badly as the latest version and those below. I've gone through the uservoice.com community posts and found quite a lot of reports of similar or near equal complaints but unfortunately most don't go into more detail or haven't been followed up by anyone.

A last thing I'll try tomorrow is to remove my GPU and switch to the integrated iGPU (currently disabled in the BIOS).

I strongly suspect the issue is semi-hardware related as in that it's probably some driver combination for processor / motherboard / chipset and GPU that just doesn't work well with InDesign/Adobe CC, i.e. could be that this is an issue exclusive to e.g. my z690 ASUS Prime motherboard paired with my RTX 3070ti Gigabyte OC GPU type/SKU.

Also, the official Adobe guide clearly says that users should not use the latest versions of particular programs for most stable performance >> https://helpx.adobe.com/download-install/kb/windows-11.html#known-issues

So there are at least some known unknowns here 🙂 I may know more tomorrow when I'll perform the GPU extraction :)))

[Peter Spier]

I hesitate to suggest this, but have you tried swapping the video card? Maybe it has a bad memory chip.

[YESNT]

I'll know more tomorrow when I remove it ... but yes, ideally I would need to test with a different GPU. That would really clear things up if the issues would disappear then. 

Edit:  Notably, I haven't had any other GPU related issues at all across a whole list of programs so a faulty module doesn't seem too likely or else it would have kicked up something during really demanding tasks which it hasn't (so far). Octane bench scores are also at the top of the model range.

[Peter Spier]

I'm thinking VRAM rather than GPU, but as you say it hasn't kicked up previously. You nevewr know, though, when something is going to hit that one bad bit.

[YESNT]

Even if it was a VRAM issue rather than general GPU issue, it won't make a huge difference although a negative VRAM Test would surely result in RMA. I have full warranty still... 

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

I'm now thinking along the lines of a bad color profile or something else meant to "help" or "boost" display quality.

Do you have HDR enabled in the video card's, er, video settings? Or some such?

[YESNT]

I don't have any fancy profiles. I double-checked on this and my set up is generally purist. I run in sRGB on stock settings, especially since this trouble shooting expedition :))) No HDR. I also tried all default settings vs boosted options in NVIDIA Control Panel or Windows etc. etc. but thanks for mentioning this. As I mentioned I'll run a test without my discrete GPU installed later today / over the weekend. Maybe I'll manage to organize a different GPU to run a comparison. I'll report back as soon as.