Object style for primary text frame not applied correctly

[Frank Fechner]

Hi there,

I'm trying to define a standard object style for the standard text frame of my document but it isn't applied correctly the i flow in text that breaks into the next page that InDesign creates for the overset text. The object style is applied to the textframe but the x/y position that was set in "Size and Position" is not. the textframe is shifted some arbitrary value to the bottom and right even causing it to span out of the page the size is still retained though. because i have quite a view parent pages defined and most have different layouts and textframe sizes and positions I've got about 2 to 3 object styles for the textframes defined.

The idea behind those object styles is to have a script that cleans the document from unintended misplacements or size changes by authors of the later documents that runs onBeforeSave and checks and optionally corrects such things. I don't want to lock the textframe.

A stripped down sample file (IDML) is attached to the post but any simple newly created object syle which defines a position and applied to the primary textframe of a parent page can reproduce this behavior as soon as overset text creates a new page.

Is this a known bug in InDesign? Am I doing something wrong here? I'm pretty shure I've done this before – years ago in ID CS4 – I think. BTW I'm on ID CC 20.5 under macOS 15.7.

Any tip, adwise and help on this is highly appreciated.

Frank Fechner

[Abhishek Rao]

Hi @Frank Fechner,

Thanks a lot for explaining the issue so clearly. To better understand this and to make sure we're following the exact same workflow, could you please share a short screen recording showing how the object style behaves when overset text creates a new page? 

Looking forward to your update.

Abhishek

[Frank Fechner]

Hi @Abhishek Rao,

sure, the video is of two parts, first part is in the stripped down template where I stumbled across this behavior, I made two parent pages, each with a primary textframe one with the object style without setting the position for the object and the other with the position setting enabled and then filled the corresponding pages in the document with placeholder text and flowed it over to the next pages. The second part is a completely new document A4 portrait doing basicly the same from scratch showing the same behavior. The funny thing is as you can see I reapplied the buggy object style onto the automaticly created textframes from the overset text and the positioning works as expexted JUST NOT while InDesign is creating the new pages when flowing the text to these pages.

I hope this helps to track down this behavior.

[Abhishek Rao]

Hi @Frank Fechner,

Thanks a lot for sharing the video. I tried to reproduce the behavior on my end by creating an object style with position settings and then flowing text across multiple pages, but the style seemed to apply correctly for me. Could you try resetting your InDesign preferences after backing it up? Ref: https://adobe.ly/3KlR8Vc
Please share how it behaves for you after the reset, so I can further investigate. Moreover, please share a sample file for testing. If confidential, share it via DM on the community. 

Looking forward to your update.

Abhishek

[Frank Fechner]

Hi @Abhishek Rao,

I attach the testfile I used in the video yesterday. Its slightly smaller and a bit more cleaned up than the version I attached in my original post.

Unfortunately I can't reset my settings at the moment because I'm very busy but will try this tomorrow. I wold however have attached a copy of my ID settings too but zip archives are not allowed to upload unfortunately and its about 15M uncompressed in size.

[Frank Fechner]

Hi @Abhishek Rao,

little Update here: I just reset all the settings of InDesign which did absolutely nothing to this problem but crashing InDesign itself on its restart (why, I mean…).

BTW i have no extensions, plugins or startup/background scripts running in InDesign and very little settings are modified from the standard it self. I do however use the german version of InDesign however if that may be of importance. My Mac is a MacBookPro 18,2 – Apple M1 Max with 64 GB RAM running macOS 15.7 (24G222).

[Abhishek Rao]

Hi @Frank Fechner,

Thank you for sharing the additional details and the test file. I'm checking this with the product team now and will update you as soon as I hear back from them.

Appreciate your patience while we look into this together.

Abhishek

[Frank Fechner]

Hi @Abhishek Rao,

in the meantime i tried an full english (US) installation of InDesign on an freshly installed older Intel Mac under macOS 13.7.8 and as an admin user (which I don't usually do) without any other software, fonts etc. and no settings in InDesign made after the installation. This did nothing at all in terms of working correctly – same behaviour as before. If you like I attached this little test file below.

Have a nice weekend.

Frank

[Abhishek Rao]

Hi @Frank Fechner,

Thank you for sharing the additional test file and the details of your setup. I've passed your findings along to the product team, and they are currently looking into this behavior. I’ll update you as soon as I hear back from the team on whether this is a known issue or if there are any suggested workarounds.

Best,

Abhishek