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A
Anonymous
January 17, 2019
Question

MathType equations are grayed out in InDesign

  • January 17, 2019
  • 2 replies
  • 3330 views

Hi everyone,

All my MathType equations are coming into InDesign as gray boxes and  anything that I did in years past has also turned into gray boxes.

Has anyone run across this issue before? (I'm at wits end at this point)

I decided to try the latest version of MathType (Trial version) 7.0. Man, was that a major mistake! Its been nothing but a migraine since.  I removed the trial version of MT and reinstalled back to MT 6.7. It did nothing to fix the problem. The workarounds are not viable for me. Saving in MT PDF format is not an option. Copy and paste from MT into InDesign is also not an option. Both options leave a cmyk profile in the files. I do mainly b & w books and work with dozens (and some times hundreds) of equations at a time. Processing out to pdf grayscale for print is a nightmare. It appears that it might be a font conflict, but it is very difficult to confirm this. I have been using InDesign since its inception and have been using MathType with it for at least 10 years now.

Oh, before I forget. This is the message I get before importing (placing) equations into InDesign:

Invalid Font error occurred creating the screen display

for the imported EPS. The EPS will draw as a gray box.

The actual EPS may not print and will not export as PDF.

Do you still want to place this file?

Wiris (who bought MathType) says this is an Adobe issue. Frankly, I don't buy it. Wiris has been giving me excuses and the run around for days now. 

I have InDesign version 5.5 (Mac) on El Capitan, MathType 6.7, and MS Office 2016.

I'm using an iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015)

Any help would be most appreciated.

Gabor

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

A
adrian139
Participant
November 19, 2019

Did you ever solve this? It just happened in a large document I'm working on, but not to every MathType image--just to the new ones.

A
adrian139
Participant
November 19, 2019

I solved this myself for others who stumble on this page someday. It was the second issue in this article and the fact that I had "Allow Object-Level Display Settings" checked under View--Display Performance, that were causing me issues.

 

https://www.rockymountaintraining.com/adobe-indesign-display-performance-controls-theyre-everywhere/

 

E
Community Expert
Eugene TysonCommunity Expert
Community Expert
January 17, 2019

Sounds like you will have to take this up with the makers of Math Type, as it's a 3rd party plugin - it's really not an InDesign issue.

A
Anonymous
January 17, 2019

Hi Eugene,

Thank you for your reply.

I do understand that this is not directly related to InDesign, but as stated, MathType (Wiris) has been really no help. I'm just trying to find out if anyone has had this issue before. General searches online has had very little results. And, of course, even MS is also no help.

The bigger issue here is that there is too much "passing the blame game" onto other software companies. This has been a growing problem for me, and many others, for a few years now. No one is willing to take any responsibility anymore. Or, at least a viable solution to some of the problems. I have muddled through and have figured out many things in the past 25 years in the DTP field. With that, I have conveyed that knowledge back to others. At this point, I'm stumped.

The question is: Why is there such a disconnect with third party developers in recent years?

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