Text disappears

[thomasi10635193]

Hi,

I'm working on a book in InDesign (I use InDesign CC on a Macbook Pro from 2013) and as soon as a change a letter in the text, all the text disappears from that spread. I have tried to restart InDesign and restart the computer, but it doesn't help.

Below are print screens of before and after I add a letter in the text.

Is there a solution for this problem?

[Steve Werner]

I would try to save as IDML to deal with possible corruption:

Clean corrupt files by exporting to .IDML or .INX

[thomasi10635193]

Thanks for your reply.

I tried what you suggested, but the problem remains. Is there anything else I can do to fix this?

Thanks,

Tomas

[Bill Silbert]

Is this happening on just this file or on any file? If it is just this file do you have an earlier version of it to go back to if Steve's IDML suggestion doesn't work? If it is happening on all files then I would suggest trashing your preferences. It may not be able to help an already corrupt file but it should prevent it from happening to new or uncorrupted files that you may work on.

To trash preferences:

The User Library folder in which InDesign’s preferences are stored is hidden by default on most Macintoshes. To access it make sure that InDesign is closed and click on the desktop to launch a Finder Window (Command-N). With this window in column view follow the path User>Home folder (it’s the folder with an icon that looks like a house—it may have the user’s name rather than “Home”) and click on the Home folder. With the Option Key pressed choose Library from the Finder Go Menu. “Library” will now appear within the Home folder. Within the Library folder find the folder called Preferences and within it find the folder called “Adobe InDesign” and the file called “com.adobe.InDesign.plist” and delete both that folder and that file. When InDesign is next launched it will create new preference files and the program will be restored to its defaults.

The advantage of manually deleting preference files in this manner is that after you’ve reset up the program (make sure that no document window is open) to your liking, you can create copies of your personalized “mint” preference files (make sure that you quit the program before copying them—that finalizes your customization) and use them in the future to replace any corrupt versions you may need to delete.

[thomasi10635193]

Thanks for your reply.

I just checked with another file and it appears that this problem is only with this file. Yes I do have an earlier version, however, I have already worked several days on this current version already.

Would you recommend to trash the preferences even though it is only one file with this problem? Or is there anything else I can do?

Thanks,
Tomas

[Bill Silbert]

Trashing preferences resets the program back to its defaults. It is possible that corrupt preferences caused this problem but it could have been something else. If you trash preferences anyway you will have at least eliminated corrupt preferences as a possible cause.

[thomasi10635193]

I just tried to delete the preferences, the problem remains. I have also checked with an earlier version of the book, and I have the same problem there.

[dave c courtemanche]

Can you select and copy all the text and paste it into a new doc? And does the same thing happen in a new doc?

[thomasi10635193]

There are a lot of footnotes in the book. How can I select both the body text and footnotes together?

[thomasi10635193 · Accepted solution]

Hi again,

As suggested above, I created a new document and copied the text to the new document. It seems that I don't have this problem anymore.

But I would be interested to learn why this problem comes up?

Thanks again for all the help.

//Tomas

[dave c courtemanche]

Tomas

Have you examined whether any of the text has "no break" applied to it? That can screw things up and lead to the empty boxes. Is hyphenation turned on? If it's off and you have a really long url, that can screw it up too.

[Peter Kahrel]

Thomas -- This is down to an InDesign recomposition and display problem. I've seen it it a number of times in the last few InDesign versions (from about CC2015). It can be solved by selecting a frame (a frame that looks empty but which shows to have content in the story editor) and recomposing it. You can recompose a frame (and its parent story) by pressing Ctrl+Alt+/ (or its Mac equivalent). If that doesn't work, make the text frame a whisker wider (0.1 points usually suffice), or just shift it by a smidgen. In my experience the problem occurs most often in frames with a continued table and in frames with text columns set.

Peter

[happie_97]

So happy you found a solution. My students often have similar issues like this.

One of the main times it happens is when they were creating a book and they push and pulled their text before applying their paragraph styles. So we have them do this in the opposite order and it works.

However, in my last class one student had an issue like yours, so after troubleshooting many things, we had them copy their text and delete the text boxes and then it worked. I’m not sure what caused the initial issue, but it worked.

[jane-e]

Look at the story in the Story Editor view from the Edit menu. What does that show after you add a character?

[thomasi10635193]

I looked at the story in the Story Editor after adding a character, and it all looks fine there, or as it should be.