Italic and Bold keyboard shortcuts are not working in 18.5 in Windows 11

[Roger Breton]

Always had success using Ctrl + Shift + B and Ctrl + Shoft + I to make text Bold and Italic. These keyboard shortcuts are still working but in a "one way street" fashion, in that they can only get me to make the selected characters either Bold or Italic (or both): if I issue the same keyboard shortcuts, as I use to do in the past with success, to remove the Bold and Italic attributes, it no longer work?

It could be a case of s these shortcuts being captured by another application? But I doubt it...

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

These problems almost invariably boil down to mis/re-mapped keys (from a plugin, a former setup, something) or scrambled preferences. Look up what keys are assigned to those combos in Keyboard Shortcuts, and/or reset your preferences — that scrambling invariably happens during an incomplete or munged update.

That said, these key-features are not really recommended as a regular practice in ID. They're word-processing conveniences copied from Word etc., and apply bold and italic simply as a local, uncontrolled override.

It's far better practice to create your own correct bold and italic styles — and you can do tweaks like using a semibold for either to get better visual balance — and then, if you like, assign shortcut keys to those Character Styles. That makes them fully managed elements with all the conveniences and advantages.

[Roger Breton]

James,

Your points are well-taken. Alas, I've been using thse word processing style keyboard shortcuts with  success ever since Version 1.0 came out, in year 2000 or thereabout. I'm aware of the pros and cons of styling text locally... Know that my current InDesign installation was created after I went from the English UI to the French UI, uninstalling and reinstalling everything in the process, recreating fresh Preferences along the way.

(I wish Adobe would create a simple UI language menu selection, the way QuarkXpress has always done it, in the International version, without forcing a complete uninstall and reinstall on the user...but that's another story...)

Could you tell me whether those "legacy" keyboard shortcuts still work for you under the English UI?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Yes, they do, in 18.5 US/English edition.

Back to the the start: 99 times out of 100, when you (1) update and (2) something simple and integral stops working, it's (3) corrupted preferences. Sigh.

[Roger Breton]

I tried resetting my Preferences and ... it didn't make a difference, bummer?

I'm glad the shortcut still works on the English/US version.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/reset-indesign-preferences-and-other-troubleshoo...

You may need to do a "deep clean".

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Yes, as this feature "should work" even on Euro language editions. (Wouldn't bet much on the MEL or CJK versions...)

I'd look, too, to make sure no other app or utility is capturing those key combos. For example, I use Simple Sticky Notes, and it captures several Alt- keys. I have to disable it to make full use of some of my apps.

[Roger Breton · Accepted solution]

Well, "egg on my face"... I think I found the "culprit" and the winner is : the font?

In the past, I've been a heavy user of Adobe's MinionPro and MyriadPro but this year, I decided to experiment with variable-width font such as AcuminPro, and that is what was casuing my problem!  I can toggle Ctrl+Shift+B all I want on a a selected set of MyriadPro characters, for example, and it will work as it's always had! But it only works one way in AcuminPro, to make Regular text -> Bold but not to make Bold back into Regular. Ah!!

I'm going to close this case. Sorry for interrupting recreation... 
Thank you all for your kind replies and patient help 🙂 

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

There is no reason to apologise. 

It's great that you've found the "problem" and shared solution with us - I think it's pretty valuable info / lesson for all of us. 

[Electroscribe_2024]

Checked out "It's the font," and found CTRL-SHIFT-B worked in Century, but not in Calibri or Segoe UI, which my unit's style guideleines require (Can take you down that rabbit trail later). CTRL-SHIFT-B should work in any font, not just a selected few. The whole point is to save the time I now have to spend using the Font pulldown menu.  Thanks for reading.

[Electroscribe_2024]

Rabbit trail on why we use Microsoft and not Adobe fonts: Main reason is to use fonts installed on most end users' computers to avoid Font Not Found issues when people read our PDFs electronically. And our lawyers are hypersensitive to copyright issues, like exporting Adobe fonts to PDFs. Again, CTRL-SHIFT-B used to work in all fonts, not just a few.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

I'm a little confused. One of PDF's signature features is that it can embed fonts so that no user on any platform has font issues, and any font enabled for embedding is inherently licensed for that purpose (and encrypted, to prevent extraction). I'm skipping over some fine points, here, but neither of the issues you raise should matter. 

[BobLevine]

What does one (KBSC for bold) have to do with the other (licensed for embedding in PDF)?

All Adobe fonts are licensed to be embedded in a PDF. Your lawyers are trying to justify their existence. As for the KBSC, it should work with any font that has a specific bold variant.

[Electroscribe_2024]

Disregard the rabbit trail about Microsoft fonts vs. Adobe fonts from the discussion.  
Also, strangely enough, CTRL-SHIFT-B just worked with Calibri in a different InDesign file from the one that caused me to enter this discussion. And it still doesn't work in the original project.
Could be a bug in the individual file.

[Electroscribe_2024]

I found the source of the problem on my computer anyway: CTRL-SHIFT-B works fine and dandy to make text bold in InDesign files without tables. But it didn't work in a file that does have a table. I went into Edit>Keyboard Shortcuts>Show Set and sure enough, I found CTRL-SHIFT-B is also assigned, in the Tables menu, to Cell Options:Text. I tried to unmap it from Tables and save a new keyboard shortcut set, but it didn't help. InDesign seems bound and determined to reserve CTRL-SHIFT-B for some other purpose -- in the one file I'm working on that has a table.  Since most of my projects don't have tables, will just leave things the way they are.

[Electroscribe_2024]

Screenshot of keyboard shortcuts