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Live or Static Captions in InDesign 2021

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
November 19, 2020
9 replies
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Is anyone else having issues generating Live or Static captions in InDesign 2021? I was trying to use the feature and it was just displaying an empty text frame. I'm grabbing metadata from the Description field of an image. When I switch back to InDesign 2020 it works like a charm. Can anyone confirm the same? Trying to figure out if this is on my end.

Bug

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Correct answer hammer0909

That's a good suggestion but no, there is no character style appled. So on a whim, I decided to delete the preferences file and voila! It now works! Should have tried that from the very beginning! You'd think after using InDesign for 20+ years I'd know better! Thanks for your help guys!

L

Laubender

Community Expert

Hi Jain,

opened your IDML file from your package.

Note: Caption setup was totally reset to default.

Seems that InDesign cannot save the setup to IDML or cannot read the setup from the IDML file.

That should be considered a bug, I think.

Next thing: Opened your InDesign file where the Caption Setup seems untouched:

Next step: I redid all captions with your InDesign document.

Page 1, same issues as before:

Page 2, all went well:

Hm…

Have to leave the office now.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

J E L

Community Expert

Hmmm is right. Also from your package, I had to reset the Caption Setup as it was also untouched. I think that is a bug for sure. Until next...

Oh, meant to add that I am also on Windows 10 and not Mac.

L

Laubender

Community Expert

Jain said:

"I couldn't duplicate it on my end and now we've done a bit of elimination. Maybe it has to do with the vendor files and how they are delivering them to you. I also wonder if it might be document specific. "

Hi Jain,

we could test the following: I place the image and prepare how static or dynamic captions should be set up.

I will also do both in my document. Then I'll package it all up and post the download link of the zip that contains the package folder.

You do the same and I'll test your packaged document in my German version of InDesign 2021.

I'm on Windows 10, you are on Mac OS, I think; this could also be a contributing factor.

Here is my setup:

Here is my zip file of the packaged folder:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5u5l9mmrvxvgzzf/210715-1-StaticCaption-Issue-INDD-2021.zip?dl=1

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

J E L

Community Expert

Okay, wow, @Laubender, check this out. With the downloaded jpg file from the button you showed me, I couldn't get the caption to work either static or live. As a tif file, both worked fine. But when I tried the same with the browser jpg I inadvertently downloaded the first time, the caption worked. Crazy! How do you explain that? Here's my packaged file with the browser-downloaded jpg. See if it works on your end.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/sekepy2xqjgdm9k/JainTest-StaticCaption-Issue-INDD-2021%20Folder.zip?dl=0

L

Laubender

Community Expert

Hi kimh567,

do you have an American version of InDesign?

I really think this is a bug with all non-american versions…

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

L

Laubender

Community Expert

Hi Jain,

this is the way I saved the attached JPEG image:

Firefox browser on Windows 10.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

J E L

Community Expert

Okay! I just used the browser download. Missed that little icon on the first glance. Thank you!

L

Laubender

Community Expert

Hi kimh567,

there is some contents in the Description field of the posted image:

Beautiful Flowers & Butterfly
37" XL®
110669 110670
$P35 Pkg $P35 Flat

Opened the JPEG in my German PhotoShop.

The contents of the field "Beschreibung" (Description) is the one I like to see as caption in InDesign:

Dynamic caption fails, static caption fails.

Tested with InDesign 2020 and 2021, also with InDesign CS6

What finally worked: saved the file to the TIFF format and placed the TIFF image:

An old bug with InDesign…

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

L

Laubender

Community Expert

FWIW: I was using a German version of InDesign.

Could be that the bug is not visible in the English/International version.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

L

Laubender

Community Expert

Wow. Never experienced this.

Thanks for the screenshot, Chad.

Could it be that a character style is applied that is using an unusual formatting like 1% character width and a point size of 0.1 Pt with a fill color set to [None] ?

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

hammer0909

AuthorCorrect answer

Community Expert

That's a good suggestion but no, there is no character style appled. So on a whim, I decided to delete the preferences file and voila! It now works! Should have tried that from the very beginning! You'd think after using InDesign for 20+ years I'd know better! Thanks for your help guys!

J E L

Community Expert

Hello Jain,

Thank you for looking into my issue. The process you used to generate the caption in InDesign is the exact process I use. However, I'm not sure where that text starting with "This is a learning journey...." came from. The metadata that should have been in the description field looks like this, and this is what shows up in Photoshop for me from the same file I sent you:

A couple of my colleagues have also been trying to troubleshoot this issue, and we've found that this issue is only happening with larger files. One workaround we found is to reduce the image size in Photoshop, and then add the metadata. (Adding metadata and then saving down does not work, though. The file size must be reduced FIRST and then the metadata added after.) We can use this workaround now that we've figure out how it works, but I suppose this issue could happen to others as well, if it is an InDesign issue. Could it be a Photoshop issue?

Hi, I am not sure where that text came from either! It must have been from another image I was testing. Anyway, your description text was stripped out in the file transfer.

You know, it should not make any difference what the file size is. InDesign should be able to generate a caption from any image file's metadata as long as the file is not corrupted in some way. That seems very strange. I was wondering if it could be a Photoshop issue but that doesn't make sense. I work with captions a lot and have imported really large files without a problem. As a test just now, I inserted a file this large as CMYK tiff and had no problem generating a caption. How large are the files you are talking about?

The only other thing I'm wondering about is how the description text is being entered. It looks as though there are space or tab characters as well as paragraph breaks in the caption that might be causing a conflict? Just an idea...

hammer0909

Author

Community Expert

I tested with a .jpg on the left and a .psd on the right. I highlighted all of the text in the caption on the right and you can see the appearance. In the Story Editor, it shows up but visually isn't appearing in Layout view.