Text in Story Editor and Notes is backwards

[twelves]

I was sent an InDesign file to copyedit and when I opened the Story Editor, all the text was backwards! Also when I try to type something in the Notes field (not in Story Editor), it's also backwards. The owner of the file doesn't know what's caused it. The actual text in layout looks fine.

[Barbara Ash]

That is unusual. Try resetting preferences. Set preferences in Adobe InDesign

[Laubender]

Hi,

the cause of it could be character formatting or paragraph formatting set to Right-to-Left as this is possible with a Middle East version of InDesign. Do you see that the paragraph composer was set to "Global"? Change that to Adobe Paragraph Composer.

Can you share a text frame exported to IDMS Snippet using a service like Dropbox?

I'd like to have a look into this.

Regards,
Uwe

[twelves]

I've checked the paragraph composers in each story and they're set to "Adobe Paragraph Composer."

Something I just discovered is that if I copy/paste the text into a new frame, the text in Story Editor is now left-to-right. So I can share a snippet with you but it won't be recreating the problem. But here's the file: Dropbox - text frame.idms

[Laubender]

Ok. Then it could be a property of the story that is causing this.

Try to duplicate a text frame showing the problem and share this as IDMS file.

Thanks.

Regards,
Uwe

[twelves · Accepted solution]

I'm not able to recreate the problem and save as an IDMS file... I'll keep trying but I'm wondering if the easiest (though annoying) solution is to just cut/paste all the text back into the file, which seems to then fix the problem.

[Srishti Bali]

Hi Karen,

I would like to know if the steps suggested above worked for you, or the issue still persists.

Kindly update the discussion if you need further assistance with it.

Thanks,

Srishti

[Troy Deckert]

I have the same problem on what should be a basic use of Place with a Word doc. The Word doc was transformed from Apple Pages.  In Story Edit, the whole story (text, subtitles, etc) is backwards only in Story Editor. The document read OK in InDesign. Laubender and twelves (the helpers above) suggest I check for Adobe Paragraph Composer, but don't explain where that is found. I typed Adobe Paragraph Composer into Help and it didn't show up, and looked in Preferences briefly and didn't see it, but I can't spend more time searching for where ever the Global/Adobe Paragraph Composer setting is. Furthermore, twelves notes that the Global setting wasn't on anyway. So, in case others have this problem, I'm reporting it as well. But, I can't wait anymore and, so I'll just either not use Story Editor on this InDesign document or try a new copy, or do a Select All and copy and paste, but I was trying to learn to use the Place function properly, then use Story Editor. Oh well. 

[Laubender]

Hi troyd71007371,

the paragraph composer is a property of a paragraph and, when text is selected, can be found either in the Paragraph panel or in the applied paragraph style of your text. There are several values for composer:

Adobe Single-line Composer
Adobe Paragraph Composer

Adobe World-Ready Single-line Composer

Adobe World-Ready Composer

And if you would use a Japanese document you may also see:

Adobe Japanese Single-line Composer
Adobe Japanese Paragraph Composer

Make sure that Adobe Single-line Composer or Adobe Paragraph Composer is applied to your text.

See also this help article:

https://helpx.adobe.com/au/indesign/using/text-composition.html

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

[debt126]

I'm having the same problem. I tried exporting as an .idml file, deleteting preferences, and pasting into a new document. It's not the paragraph composer.

[Laubender]

Hi debt126,

share an InDesign document with one frame where you see the issue.

Best put it on Dropbox or a similar service and post the download link.

Thanks,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

[jeacret]

This is old – but I have had this issue occasionally when placing text from Word into InCopy. Today, was one such day. After looking for reasons as to why this was happening (and finding this thread), I tried applying new paragraph styles to the text. It actually flipped/corrected the text. The only text still backwards was that which was still using the Word styling inside tables.  I found that I could flip the text on corrected samples by applying the Word style, too. All that to say, I believe it's something specific to Word.

[Laubender]

"I believe it's something specific to Word"

Hi @jeacret ,

perhaps also something in InDesign's or InCopy's Word import filter.

Something, perhaps a special character from Word, that the import filter is detecting as the one to change the direction of text. Or a formatting in Arabic or Hebrew which forces the import filter to change paragraph and text direction.

If you could provide a sample Word file I'll have a look…

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Expert )