paragraph styles acting strangely

[dw3510]

I'm working in InDesign 20.1 on a mac.

I'm noticing two related things happening. (1) I have two versions of the same document. I was copying some older content into a newer version, same styles exist in both. When I paste the content into the second version, it doesn't retain the style, it all goes back to basic paragraph. (2) Also, when in the document, I noticed that I'm working in the bibliography, with created "bibliography" style. I needed to add another entry, so I placed cursor at the end of an entry (I can see that unaltered "bibliograhy" style is highlighted in Paragraph styles). Then I hit return to go to a new line and the style jumps to my "body text" style in the dialog box, before I even paste anything. I've never had these things happen before, but it is wasting time and creating potential inconsistencies. Thx.

[Eugene Tyson]

1) the style sounds like it's Based on Basic Paragraph style

https://creativepro.com/beware-basic-styles/

2) Seems like the Paragraph Style has a Next Style included in the style

https://www.rockymountaintraining.com/adobe-indesign-how-to-use-the-next-style-attribute/

[dw3510]

These things made sense to me, actually I didn't know that the next style existed, but for the bibliography, it was set to next style "body text". I've never had that happen before. On the first point, I checked my body text style. It is based on "no paragraph style", other file as well. I checked my basic paragraph style anyway. It is set to Arial (client's choice), which is the same as the body text style, but when I paste, it shows as Adobe Arabic. Good news is that when I paste from a completely separate Indesign document, it does paste that text's correct style. There just must be something weird about these.

[Eugene Tyson · Accepted solution]

Your first screenshot is not loading for me.

In your screen recording when you paste the text there's a Paragraph Style override, you can see the Plus symbol appear beside body text. 

Try in your InDesign preferences to turn off the Paste All Information and just paste plain text. 

https://helpx.adobe.com/ie/indesign/using/adding-text-frames.html#:~:text=the%20selected%20text.-,Pa...

[Randy Hagan]

On the first count, do paragraph style(s) contain PostScript fonts? That, like messing with the default/[Basic Paragraph] font, can cause anomalies when moving from document to document.

On the second, I agree with Eugene Tyson above that it could be because your Next Font: options box in the Paragraph Syles  dialog bos is set to change to your body text style.

Hope this helps,

Randy

[Mike Witherell]

You don't also have a character style applied, do you?  Or IOW a character style that is on all the time instead of set to None? That can confuse things.