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adamk93229702
Known Participant
March 10, 2024
Answered

Page content is different in Preview vs Normal mode

  • March 10, 2024
  • 5 replies
  • 2773 views

I've got a page where if I use the 'W' shortcut to switch to Preview and back, the content changes. Just happens to be on a retail press advertisement with pricing and discounts. SCARY.

 

It's confidential at the moment, so cannot share, but have a video I can share when the ad hits the newspapers.

 

I've got a 1 month old Macbook Pro M3 Max with 64gb RAM and an up-to-date version of Sonoma running. It cost me nearly $8,000 and the Indesign experience is hopeless. It's only marginally faster than the 2020 Intel i9 32GB machine that I upgraded and has far more bugs. The upgrade specifically to get better performance in Indesign so far has been a waste of money. Desperately hoping that future releasees of Indesign are compatible with the newest hardware.

Correct answer mooirood

This helped me: View > check: Overprint preview (in Dutch the picture)

 

5 replies

mooiroodCorrect answer
Participant
April 1, 2025

This helped me: View > check: Overprint preview (in Dutch the picture)

 

Participant
March 20, 2024

P.S. I'm running WINDOWS X on a PC, so this issue is not just on Macs. 

Participant
March 20, 2024

I have the same thing happening (today and yesterday), and saw a post about this 4 years ago as well.

 

Switching between the preview and normal screen setting yields text flowing differently. Of course I don't think it really is different, just that the "preview mode" has not caught up with reality. When I close the document a reopen, it resolves (I ididn't have to quit Indesign to get it looking right). I switch between the two views using a custom keyboard shortcut, but next time will try the menu dropdown. I can't reproduce it now since I resolved it. BUT I would almost put money on it happening again! I'm using an older CC version (2019) but have noticed that some bugs have ridden right along with all of the updates right back CS 4.0!

leo.r
Community Expert
Community Expert
March 13, 2024

> an up-to-date version of Sonoma running

 

I just have to ask: what's the exact version of your macOS? Sometimes "up-to-date version" turns out to not to be such. macOS 14.3 solved the display issues you describe for most users (although some users do report that it didn't make any difference).

adamk93229702
Known Participant
March 13, 2024

I have 14.3.1, which at the time of the OP, was the latest (in Australia, we don't get software releases at the same time as US). I can now see that 14.4 is available but I will wait until the weekend to upgrade in case it causes new issues. An update to 19.3 was released here and I updated it yesterday. The laggy responses to switching documents, panning around the screen, zoom in/out still remain, but I've been able to duplicate pages in the Pages palette without crashing Indesign, so that must have been a known bug fixed in the 19.3. Baby steps.

 

adamk93229702
Known Participant
March 21, 2024

Sadly not, Indesign crashing again on Duplicate Spread via any method. This time, (3rd time it's happened) crashes the whole system. I've deleted preferences, caches, updated Sonoma to 14.4, Indesign to 19.3. No joy.

 

James Gifford—NitroPress
Legend
March 11, 2024

What content changes, and how, when you switch from Preview to Normal?

 

What performance limitations are you seeing with InDesign — specifically?

 

You should be aware — and as an existing user, should have been aware — that ID is not fully compatible with Sonoma. The recommendation is not to upgrade to Sonoma yet if ID is part of your critical workflow.

 

As for the rest — money spent has never been a guarantee of "performance" or capability. Based on everything you state, you could have saved either the expenditure on a new system, or such a lavish one. There are a number of performance and reliability issues with InDesign that can be solved by relatively simple reconfiguration, or removing system bottlenecks, that will not necessarily be fixed by moving to an uber platform. (And if you switched platforms with the idea that "Mac is better" for Adobe apps, well, there hasn't been a significant difference in platforms with more or less comparable specs for at least a decade, maybe longer.)

 

But let's start with those first two questions. While ID can have some performance issues with some complex elements, mostly long documents with complex dynamic formatting and/or cross references and/or many images with applied effects, a single page ad of almost any complexity is — in my experience — well within acceptable performance returns. So let's figure out what's wrong that doesn't have anything to do with the silicon.

adamk93229702
Known Participant
March 11, 2024

James,

 

1) Text boxes that contain a price, e.g. $7,099 when viewed in Normal view, change to $0,000 (as per the template I started creating the document) when viewed in Preview, triggered using the W shortcut. See before and after from movie I took of it.  I'm sure you can undestand how this could be a frightening bug when sending out press ads that are seen by millions of readers. The issue did not occur in the same file once I'd quit Indesign and restarted.

 

 

 

2) There are a number of performance issues. Zooming in/out using various methods is not responosive, screen redraw when using the hand to pan around the layout is laggy or glitchy, switching between open documents is slower than my old Mac, duplicating pages in the Pages palette crashes Indesign every time. I could go on.

 

3) The machine came with Sonoma installed. I got it in February. Sonoma was released in September 2023 – I think it's unreasonable to expect users to backdate their OS on new hardware after 5 months. I'd suggest that developer effort could be focused entirely on stable Sonoma release and the list of long-unresolved bugs, rather than niche enhancements and extenstions.

 

4) I'm based in Australia. We pay far more for Apple gear here, regardless of USD exchange rate. My 2020 MBP would max out of the 32GB RAM; I can't see why opting for a high spec CPU/GPU configuration to maximise the machine's lifespan would be viewed as a poor decision.  I haven't used Windows for 20 years – not sure whey you'd introduce that to this discussion.

 

5) I'm interested to hear what bottlenecks users need to address to get the software to run nicely on premium hardware. My documents are not complex, generally no more than 4 pages and based on templates I've been using for 10 years.

rob day
Community Expert
Community Expert
March 11, 2024

Hi Rob, thanks for the tip – checked and the layer is set to print. This bug resolved itself in the file after I quit Indesign and restarted. Not sure if it's how Preview mode works, but wondering if the preview is cached as changes are made to the file and the cached view was out of sync?


UI problems can be Cache related—usually you see it in the panels.

 

Clearing your Caches folder is a relatively painless troubleshooting step–on MacOS its delete this folder ~username ▸ ⁨Library⁩ ▸ ⁨Caches⁩ ▸ ⁨Adobe InDesign⁩ ▸ ⁨Version X.0⁩