Strange corrupted/distorted text in InDesign

[jackbrannen_pl]

This has been a problem for years. Text in any of my documents will sometimes appear like this.

I have to change the view in some way (pan, zoom, etc.) to get it to go away.

Anyone know why this happens or how to fix?

[Peter Spier]

See Reset InDesign Preferences and Other Troubleshooting  and scroll down to directions for clearing the InDesign cache files. That may help.

[jackbrannen_pl]

@Peter Spier Thank you. I've tried all the deleting of caches and prefs and am still able to reproduce the problem.

[Peter Spier]

OS and version of InDesign?

[jackbrannen_pl]

mac OS 15.6

InDesign 20.5

[Abhishek Rao]

Hi @jackbrannen_pl,

Thanks for sharing the details. Could you confirm if this issue is limited to this specific document or if you're seeing the same behavior in other files as well? Also, is GPU Performance currently enabled under Preferences? If it is, please try toggling it off and let me know if that makes any difference after restarting InDesign.

It would also be helpful to know if this behavior only started after updating to macOS 15.6, or if you were experiencing it on earlier versions too.

If possible, a short screen recording showing what the text looks like before and after zooming or panning would be great to help us look into this further.

Looking forward to your update.

Abhishek

[jackbrannen_pl · Accepted solution]

@Abhishek Rao Now that I think about it, it may just be this document—in which case I know that's the source of the problem. Thanks for your help.

[Abhishek Rao]

Hi @jackbrannen_pl,

Glad to hear you were able to narrow it down to a specific document. In that case, I'd suggest exporting the file as an IDML, reopening it, and checking if the issue still appears. You can also try copying the affected content into a new document to see if it displays correctly there.

Let me know how it goes.

Abhishek