Text disappears when typing in text box

[Elaine5E3A]

I'm getting this issue where when I make any changes to text within a text box, like typing within it, cutting/pasteing, editing, etc. the text disappears. Sometimes it'll come back if I click out of the text box. Sometimes it comes back if I switch between normal and preview mode.

It doesn't happen every time, but often enough to be incredibly annoying.

I'm running:

• Mac OS 11.4
• Macbook Air M1 2020
• InDesign 16.2.1

[chriscutter]

Same issue here,

InDesign 16.3.2

Mac OS 11.5.1

Macbook Pro M1 - 16GB RAM

Any suggestions!?

[Laubender]

Hi chriscutter,

what sometimes helps:

a keyboard command that enforces all stories of a document to recompose again.

Details about that at:

Force Text Reflow When InDesign Forgets to Flow the Text
by David Blatner, January 3, 2009
https://creativepro.com/force-text-reflow-when-indesign-forgets-to-flow-the-text/

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

[chriscutter]

Forcing Textreflow works fine, but this cannot be a permanent solution if I have to press a keyboard command to continue my work every 10 seconds. any other suggestions?

[Laubender]

"… any other suggestions?"

Sorry, no.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

[Fearless_artist5E5A]

I am having the same issue. InDesign 16.4.

Text disappears. Unable to use your application.

Did I forget to pay my subscription fee?

[Scully20]

It's an InDesign issue, not a payment issue.  We are all having the same problem.  I upgraded to the latest version (16.4) yesterday so we'll see if they fixed anything.  Highly doubt it but you never know!

[Fearless_artist5E5A]

Well it's disappointing. Adobe and M1 performance has been very bad, overall. Premiere unusable. InDesign unusable. I did realize it might be a memeory issue with the disappearing text. I have a Mac Mini M1 only 8GB RAM. Once i quit all other apps InDesign was behaving better.

[Fearless_artist5E5A]

Clearing my memory (quitting most apps…) helped with my disappearing text issues in Adobe InDesign on an M1

[virfortisdei]

I currently have the same issue (Mac OS 11.5.2 / MacMini M1 / InDesign 16.4) but tbh this bug has been around for years on and off on countless different combinations of Mac OS & InDesign versions on 6 different Macs… sometimes it looks like it's fixed or at least occurring less frequently in one update just to come back in the next one (so it doesn't have anything to do with M1 vs. Intel etc.)

[Ashutosh_Mishra]

Hi there,

Sorry to hear about your experience. Do you see this behavior with a specific file? Are you working on the files saved on a network drive?

I'd request you to try the suggestions given on this community post & let us know if that helps. Looking forward to your response.

Regards,

Ashutosh

[virfortisdei]

no, it's not limited to different files or file locations… 

---

@Ashutosh_Mishra  schrieb:

Hi there,

Sorry to hear about your experience. Do you see this behavior with a specific file? Are you working on the files saved on a network drive?

I'd request you to try the suggestions given on this community post & let us know if that helps. Looking forward to your response.

Regards,

Ashutosh

---

I've tried all usual recommendations (as in the link) countless times, it doesn't fix the issue, at least not permanently. No, it's not limited to specific files, fonts used in the files or file locations… usually my files are on external SSDs but the same happened with files on internal SSDs (and hard drives on older Macs), files on external hard drives, network drives etc.

[Zagato58]

Hi, I just wanted to also add that I have been having exactly the same issue. It's constant and extremely frustrating. Typing in a text box (or doing anything in a text box) in Indesign causes the contents to disappear. If I zoom out or in, the content reappear. I've been doing this constantly now for months and it's kind of annoying. I've never come across this before and had assumed it might have been a screen display problem. But I see form this feed that this might be a familiar Indesign bug? Please fix it Adobe! I'm on an M1 Mac and just updated my Indesign to the latest version today. It's slightly less frequent now. But still happening frequently (as in every other time I type).

[Joel Berggren]

This is still an issue in InDesign 16.4 on M1 Macs. Makes the program nearly unisable and has nuked my workflow

[Fearless_artist5E5A]

it's a memory issue. at least for me it was. i'm sure it can be improved though but maybe that helps resolve it for you.

[Scully20]

What do you mean by "memory issue"?

Thanks!

[Fearless_artist5E5A]

having too many applications open. i use istatsmenu to monitor my memory usage. I only have 8GB Mac Mini so i have to be very careful how many applications are open. Just by having Figma and Firefox.. they both take up 8GB.. so if you let's say start working on InDesign.. Memory allocation is full and memory will be swapped from your hard drive.. causing issues.

[Scully20]

I have an 8GB Mac Mini too so I'll have to try to keep only InDesign open when I'm working and see if it makes a difference.  Thanks for the advice!

[Joel Berggren]

Thanks so much for the clarification. This does seem to help, and at least allows me to get a bit of work done. Hopefully it points Adobe in the right direction to actually fix this issue instead of pretending to be confused every time this issue is posted!

[default7gzn6309np7b]

InDesign 16.3.2 (up to date)

iMac, M1 2021

iOS 11.4

WHY DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING???

WHO CAN WORK LIKE THIS???

Adobe: This membership costs an arm and a leg as it is. It is unbelievable that something this simple has to be corrrected by downloading an OLDER version???

Imagine being a mechanic. And that everytime you want to reach for your wrench, the wrench dissapears. So you have to go get one EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. How fast, effecient and productive do you think you'll be? Not very much, right? 

So what's your answer, Adobe.

[Laubender]

Hi default7gzn6309np7b,

best update your InDesign 2021 to 16.4.

https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/kb/fixed-issues.html

https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/system-requirements.html

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

[Beat Schaffner]

Issue is NOT SOLVED. It's almost impossible to work on a layout when text boxes are disappearing every sec.

Very frustrating.

Working on M1/InDesign 16.4

[SteveP56]

Having posted about this a while ago, one suggestion from a contributor was to have all other applications closed. I think this does help, but it’s hardly a fix.
Adobe needs to get a solution — quickly. Adobe needs to step up and take responsibility for this huge blunder. Never mind bombarding with more and more marketing; just get on and get us a usable version of your product. This is the same kind of problem that plagued QuarkXpress — a forerunner of Indesign. They took their users for granted as well and ignored them. Update after update yielded these kinds of annoying bugs. Eventually, Adobe stepped on and completely took their market. If they don’t watch out, Adobe will become a victim to some newer, sharper start-up who may well repeat history. Adobe: stop taking us for granted. Fix these problems.

[Joel Berggren]

This doesn't help at all, the issue is just as persistent in 16.4, which I'm sure you're aware of.

[Laubender]

So is this basically a memory issue? Do you all have 8 GB Macs with the M1 chip?

I'd suggest you sign in to InDesign Prerelease where you can talk more directly to the developers and product engineers.

https://www.adobeprerelease.com/beta/C6DFA254-C40C-4EEB-8F6D-F4AEDA2E6171

Source:

How to Join Creative Cloud Prerelease Programs
Erin Finnegan, Oct 18, 2019, UPDATE July 24th, 2020
https://medium.com/adobetech/how-to-join-creative-cloud-prerelease-programs-ccecc10ae7d3

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

[Joel Berggren]

It's an Adobe InDesign issue that seems to be related to memory allocation.