Panel error

[Johnny Carbon]

Hi everyone

In InDesign CC2015, CC2017 and CC2018 one of my colleagues has strange looking panels.

Basically they look like they have been split into two columns.

If we look at the paragraph style panel, for instance, the first column shows the paragraph styles, but the second column is empty next to the space that the paragraph styles take up, but the Quick Apply icon and the [+] icon are at the top of the 2nd column and at the bottom of the 2nd column are the Folder, Clear Overrides, New Style, and Trash icons.

We just want to merge them back into 1 column as panels normally appear.

Does anybody know what has happened here and how to put things back right again?

Thanks in advance for any help.

[BobLevine]

Screenshots would be helpful, but that sounds like some kind of corrupt preferences.

Troubleshooting 101: Replace, or "trash" your InDesign preferences

[Johnny Carbon]

[happie_97]

Have you tried resetting your preferences as Bob suggested?

[Johnny Carbon]

To be honest I would like to reset the preferences as a last resort.

The reasoning behind this is because of the amount of time it takes to reset  all the different print options we have in our print presets. Due to the style of printers that we have, we have to manually adjust every single print preset that we use. When we import the print presets we still have to go into each print option and manually readjust them again for them to work correctly. For instance for printing black and white you have to go in and change it to grayscale, otherwise it will print colour, but to do this you have to do it in a particular sequence of events, otherwise it will not be recognised.

We have had to follow this method due to the fact that we were printing grayscale but the printers were counting these proofs as colour ones even though they appeared black, and we were being charged for printing colour proofs from our rented printers which is an additional cost.

I know it sounds odd, but it is a fact. So to get the print presets correct, it would take about 3/4 hour to do all the three InDesigns, and then due to human error the odd one would still be wrong.

[Bill Silbert · Accepted solution]

Panel errors can many times be fixed by deleting InDesign cache files rather than preferences. You will not have to reset up anything after deleting these files. If this is the solution your panels should behave as they are supposed to but your interface will otherwise be unaffected.

To delete caches:

For Macintosh Users: With InDesign closed launch a Finder Window in column view and click on your home folder. With the Option Key pressed choose Library from the Finder Go Menu. Within the Library folder find the “Caches” folder. Within the Caches folder find and delete the entire file “Adobe InDesign”. I find that deleting the cache file completely leads to a lasting change. 

For Windows Users: On Windows 7 and above the caches files are hidden. To find them go to the Control Panel and open Folder Options and then click the View tab. Then select “Show hidden files and folders” or “Show hidden files, folders or drive options” in Advanced Settings. Then delete (or rename) the folder at the end of this path: C:\Users\[User Name]\AppData\Local\Adobe\InDesign\Version [#]\<Language>\Cache.

[jmlevy]

Hi Bill,

You wrote

Within the Library folder find the “Caches” folder. Within the Caches folder find and delete the entire file “Adobe InDesign”. I find that deleting the cache file completely leads to a lasting change.

Do you mean the entire folder “Adobe InDesign”?

If I refer to this old Peter Spier 2016 post, I read that only the InDesign SavedData file has to be deleted… So, is there something about this?

Troubleshooting 101: Replace, or "trash" your InDesign preferences

[Bill Silbert]

Yes. I have found that deleting the whole folder works more long term than just the saved data file. I have experienced reoccurrence when I didn’t Delete the whole folder.

[Johnny Carbon]

Thank you so much Bill for your diagnosis. Deleting the Cache files has corrected the problem. I did not delete the whole 'Adobe InDesign' folder but the subfolders within of the offending InDesigns - 'Version 11.0', 'Version 12.0' and 'Version 13.0' and this seems to have worked.

Thank you everybody else for your suggestions and comments, it has all been really helpful and I really appreciate it.

Gratitude to you all.

Cheers

John

[Bill Silbert]

Glad it all worked out.