Overset Text Error in InDesign Despite No Visible Text

[Faith5C32]

Looking at my preflight panel to check the errors on a multi-page doc. I am getting 2 overset text errors. But when I go to the specified area of the doc, there is nothing. I tried everything - I deleted everything off the spread, and the error still remains. There is nothing locked on the spread. I checked all layers of the documents and even checked the master pages to no avail. What's weird is if I copy and paste the contents of the page to a new doc, the error is gone. I have tried individually deleting all the type boxes and the error remains.

Please help!

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[Roberts Viksne]

This solution helped me to get rid off this mysterious Overset Text symbol when there is no visible text. Thank you Peter!

[mcanzani]

Thank you!! This was driving me crazy!

[Laubender]

Hi Faith5C32,

at least show a screenshot with one of the errors selected in the Preflight panel with Information showing as well.

And the page clicked in the Preflight panel of this particular error so that "something" is selected on the page.

How many characters are overset?

Thanks,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

[AM_01 · Accepted solution]

Okay, I think I know what's the problem. I've been struggling with the same issue and went through all the steps possible to troubleshoot it. It turned out that I had a text box that had the visibility turned off. When you click on the preflight text it should point you at the text box but for me, it wasn't showing anything, it was just pointing me to a blank section of the page. The catch is that if the hidden textbox is registered as being part of a different page (that you don have selected ) it won't show in the layers panel. ctrl+click /select the pages and check the layers panel for visibility on/off. It might take you a while but you should be able to identify the text box. 

[Saroopy]

Absolute lifesaver - why on earth there were hidden text boxes in my layer I have no idea grrr

[Jumpenjax]

Double check, you do not have an extra space at the end of your paragraph.

[Erin28836701vrm8]

THANK YOU - this resolved my issue. 

[Stephanie See]

This same issue came up for me, and it was saying there was something like 128 overset characters. I tried all of the suggestions in this thread and still wasn't seeing it. The simplest solution I found that worked was to go to Object > Show All on Spread. It turns out there was a hidden text box hiding behind some other elements, so I didn't see it with the other search methods. By showing all on the spread it made the text visible instead of just highlighting the text box.

[Jumpenjax]

You may have a return but no text. Check all ending text boxes for the little red plus box.

[francc1]

This happens a lot for my work. I found the best way to find the hidden text is to: Select all (with Text tool); Copy; Paste into Text Edit. Voilå ... all the text is there. Copy and Paste back into InDesign.

[turquoisequeen]

This worked for me too! Thank you for the tip! 

[LSJohnson]

Thank you. This worked perfectly!

[Brendan5D14]

Excellent that was exactly it! Why is that in the app??? drove me nuts!

[Peter Spier]

Don't blame Adobe. Word always adds an extra blank return at the end of a document...

[francc1]

This happens a lot for my work. I found the best way to find the hidden text is to: Select all (with Text tool); Copy; Paste into Text Edit. Voilå ... all the text is there. Copy and Paste back into InDesign. I also find that if you Paste without Formatting there is less of this issue.

[Damien22667893f5m6]

It's a text box hidden in a sub-layer. Use the Preflight palette to jump to the error page. Then in the Layers palette start opening up the submenus for each of your layers until you find a sublayer that is hidden. Click the eyeball to reveal, and delete or modify the offending text box.

[defaultox3c8thluat9]

I was having a similar problem in that it was showing overst text and my text was disappearing however when I looked in Edit in Story Editor for the life of me I couldn't figure out what was keeping my text from appearing as the text box had plenty of space and no breaks were listed. I finally saw a teeny tiny hidden character that looked liked a down arrow. I removed that and voila, all the text reappeared ond overtext msg was gone. Not sure what I did to add that (it might be a column break). Hope this helps!

[rob day]

[Peter Spier]

Sounds like a column break and you aded it by pressing the Enter key on the Numpad (that's a default keyboard shortcut).

[Micah5C08]

Hello. I have a hint maybe. I realize this post is years old but someone may need this.

I was working with an editor who uses incopy bouncing the document back and forth and ran into to this situation you described—Getting an error for overset when closing the file or printing, but the preflight panel wasn't finding it. We found that the overset was still being found from the history of the document because track changes was on. Basically the overset text still existed somewhere that we could not see because it was saved in track changes. The editor turned off track changes in incopy and we stopped getting that phantom overset error.

Don't know if that's the same problem you are having but something worth checking!

[Lanipux12]

I'm pretty sure 23am is right about the hidden text box, but I never could find it.
I created a new layer, moved everything on the offending layer to the new one, then deleted the old one. **POOF** GONE! Thanks for the insight!

[Peter Applerock · Accepted solution]

I had a similar problem and I followed every trick suggested in this discussion. The resolution was.....

I looked at all assets on the page and they all showed visible in the layer view, so I couldn't understand what causes the error if I can't see it. Then I realised that inside of one group there was a text box that was overset. As simple as that.