Objects, guides moving when I copy a page

[Warren Bingham]

I'm having a struggle with InDesign 20.31 (and earlier versions of 20). I have a document that is 66 picas by 102 picas. The margins are 1p6 on all sides with single page spreads. If I option drag a page, copy a page or drag a page down from a parent page, the guides move and the text frames change size. Everything moves down and to the right. The first time the top and left margins change from 1p6 to 1p4.2. If I option drag it again, it moves from 1p4.2 to 1p2.8. If I set up columns when I set up the margins on a parent page, the colums don't move, but the guides and frames do.

Has anyone else experienced this phenomenon? For what I need InDesign to do for this project, this is a severe problem and it has made me question all of the other parent pages I have created with guides.

Thanks for any help!

[Eugene Tyson]

Hey

I cannot reproduce this on Windows 10 with 8gb of RAM 2025 is quite quick, surprisingly, and the Parent Pages work as expected. 

I added guides to them, Parent Text Frame, individual text frames and images. 

I added them to normal pages.

I copied the pages with drag alt 

and duplicate pages

dragging parent pages

Everything works fine for me. 

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If a document is not behaving well then try 

File>Export 

Choose IDML

Open the IDML in InDesign
Save the file as a new InDesign file with a new name
See if the issue persists.

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Try resetting your preferences:

InDesign 19.3 and newer go to Preferences > General > and click on "Reset Preferences on Quit" and then quit and restart.

Or
Windows: Start InDesign, and then press Shift+Ctrl+Alt. Click Yes when asked if you want to delete preference files.
macOS: While pressing Shift+Option+Command+Control, start InDesign. Click Yes when asked if you want to delete preference files.
A dialog will appear asking to delete the InDesign Preferences, select 'Yes' on this dialog.



More in-depth cleanse of preferences

https://helpx.adobe.com/in/indesign/kb/indesign-preferences-support-file-locations.html

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Reinstalling rarely fixes everything - you can do a complete reinstall using the
Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/kb/cc-cleaner-tool-installation-problems.html

[Warren Bingham]

I have exported to IDML and imported the IDML file. No change. I guess preferences are next. I may take it to a PC and see if it does the same thing for me there.

Thanks,

Warren

[Eugene Tyson]

Stress that you don't import the IDML - you open the IDML and it should rebuild the file getting rid of any surplus built up code in the background. Then save the file as a new inDesign file.

Let us know how it goes anyway - reckon it's a preferences thing if the IDML is not working.

[Mike Witherell]

So, is this problem happening on a macOS system?

What version of macOS?

Have you checked to see if your File > Document Setup agrees with the page size of your local and parent page sizes?

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@Warren Bingham

Can you share a sample document? 

[Abhishek Rao]

Hi @Warren Bingham, just checking if you were able to resolve the issue by following the expert suggestions? If the problem still persists, feel free to share a sample file and a short screen recording demonstrating the issue so that we can have a look. Looking forward to your response.

^AR