Text refuses to align to bottom of frame

[OsakaWebbie]

In my design of a magazine, the main text uses baseline grid, but each article's author bio is a smaller font with no alignment to the grid. The author bio in its own frame, with Text Frame Options -> Align=Bottom. As long as I make sure the bottom of the bio frame is on one of the grid lines, I normally can get things to look nice, with the bottom of the bio aligned with the bottom of text in other columns. But this time it's acting weird, probably related to wrapping around an image. No matter where I put the bio frame, I can't get the text to align to the bottom of the frame. I think InDesign is using its own algorithm to try to make the appearance of the lines pleasing, but I want to prioritize the text alignment in the frame over "beauty". Can I do that? Or is this a bug?

Here's a screenshot with context - the selected frame on the right side is the bio. If InDesign would make the text flush with the bottom of the text frame, it would align with "God's reality." on the left side.

[Laubender]

Hi @OsakaWebbie ,

will the text align to the bottom of the text frame if you move the text frame to the pasteboard?

If not check the inset values of the text frame. Set them to 0 for the bottom.

Also check if there are items on the page or applied parent page with text wrap enabled like it seems to be the case with the image inside the circle .

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Expert )

[OsakaWebbie]

Yes, if I move it to the pasteboard or anywhere else where there is no image with text wrap, it aligns to bottom as it should. That's why I said it seems to be InDesign prioritizing appearance of the text line lengths (which would change if moved up or down along the steeply angled edge of the image) over accuracy of following my "rules", and I was wondering if there is a way to force it to more strictly obey the alignment setting.

[Laubender]

Hi @OsakaWebbie ,

if text wrap is the issue, I would check the image ( first candidate, but perhaps not the only one ) for text wrap.

Perhaps you could change the path of the wrap a bit so that your small text frame will not be affected so much.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Expert )

[sally_6733]

Hello,

InDesign's text frame is being affected by vertical justification or text wrap. Check that Vertical Justification is set to "Top," Align to Baseline Grid is off for the bio text, and there's no extra space after the paragraph.

Best Regard,

Sally

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@OsakaWebbie

Can you share a sample document - here ir privately?

Just this one page - without links. 

You can either scramble text or fill with "lorem ipsum". 

[OsakaWebbie]

I don't know how to share privately, but I'm not worried about it - see attached. I did need to remove the article text, because it was the last page of an article and trying to break the thread between frames didn't work right. But the problem is not dependent on the article text as long as you remember that the column on the left side of the image stops at the gridline where the bottom of the bio frame is currently, so I'm trying to align with that.

I'm aware that I might have to change the text wrapping shape of the image to get InDesign to do what I want (as Laubender suggested). I'm not sure yet how to do that with an ellipse, since the wrap path doesn't start out with handles, but I can figure that out (if necessary, turn off wrapping on the real image and add multiple invisible shapes with their own wrap - I've done that many times working with complex shapes). It's already clear from all the responses that there isn't a setting somewhere to prioritize layout over text wrap asthetics, which is what I was initially wondering - if there was such a setting, one of you wonderful people would have already mentioned it.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@OsakaWebbie 

It's strange... 

If I'll move it a few mm down - it won't align: 

And another few mm down - it will align: 

[OsakaWebbie]

I thought maybe it would align if the words were shorter (therefore easier for InDesign to wrap at will), but the behavior is the same - if the text is less than four lines it seems to work, but once it becomes long enough to need a fourth line, it starts getting wacky (although the amount of unwanted space at the bottom isn't consistent - if the real bio text were as close as this example, I would have declared it good enough, as our readers don't put rulers on the pages to check my design details).

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@OsakaWebbie 

In case of sharing privately - you need ot click on the nick of the person you want to send a private message. 

In terms of your problem - you've found a bug... 

I've copied your two objects to a new document - still problem. 

I've created brand new document and created new objects - still problem. 

It looks like it depends on the number of rows  ABOVE the TextWrap line - and / or - length of the last line in the TextFrame. 

Problem disappear when top of the small letters of the first line goes below the top of the TextWrap shape: 

Then there i sno problem all the way down: 

[OsakaWebbie]

I wonder if this bug (if it's indeed a bug) is related to another quirk I've fought in a different periodical I lay out (a newsletter for a different organization). In that case I don't use a grid, so I set the text columns to Align=Justify to keep things tidy, but occasionally one of the columns will mysteriously refuse to align at the bottom. I do place photos with text wrap in various places on the newsletter pages, so I'm now thinking that it might be related to this current problem somehow.

[rob day]

Hi @OsakaWebbie , You are not showing invisibles, are you sure there are no returns at the end?

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@rob day

OP already mentioned, that if this TextFrame is moved to the pasteboard - it aligns with the bottom of the TextFrame - so there are no extra hidden empty paragraphs.

[Laubender]

Hi @OsakaWebbie ,

thank you for the attached InDesign sample document.

I found a workaround for that strange situation.

Let's be clear that the situation with text wrap is this, image selected so that the path of the wrap ( 8 mm ) is visible:

When I added a path point to the text wrap's path with the Pen tool the text will move to the bottom:

I have no idea why this is necessary, but it does work. The trajectory of the path did not change.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Expert )

[OsakaWebbie]

I tried adding anchor points (with no effect - see below), but just now I realized that you were adding them to the wrap boundary, not the object shape. But I don't see how to do that - how do you get the wrap boundary line to display for an ellipse? I only see those lines when the shape is a rectagle, as far as I can figure out.

[OsakaWebbie]

Ah, I turned text wrap off and then on again, and I could then see the line. But adding anchor points to that didn't fix the problem either.

 

[Laubender]

Hi @OsakaWebbie ,

hard to tell why your second attempt with adding a path point to the wrapping path did not work.

Find attached my test document where I added the path point:

Alignment MWE-PathPointAdded.indd

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Expert )

[OsakaWebbie]

I simply downloaded and opened your file (no changes - I didn't touch it), and this is what it looks like on my computer. I guess it likes you better! 🤔

[Laubender]

Hi @OsakaWebbie ,

thank you for testing my sample.

Let's discuss what that can mean:

Perhaps "something" is preventing your InDesign to redraw the text?

I had missing fonts and did not correct that. So perhaps this issue is font related?

One could try to enforce a recomposition of the text frame.

How to do that:

Select the text frame and use a menu command that is not visible in the UI, but has a keyboard shortcut.

In the international macOS version that should be ctrl + alt + / . In my German version, see screenshot below, I think it is Shift + F5.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Expert )

[OsakaWebbie]

In Keyboard Shortcuts I did find "Redraw" with a keyboard shortcut of Shift-F5. But when I pressed it, nothing visibly happened (not even a flicker of the page or text frame, which I would have expected). I tried it with nothing selected, with the text frame selected (with the object selection tool), and with the text selected.

As for the missing fonts, that's almost certainly from all the paragraph styles I didn't think to remove when I made the MWE. The only font actually used is Adobe Garamond Pro, which I assume you have. Attached is your document after I removed all the parent pages and styles that are not relevant. If it still complaints of missing fonts, something is going on behind the scenes that I can't see.

We're almost ready to publish (should be done by the end of this week), and if necessary I can tweak the anchor points to get it to move slightly downward (though it never completely touches the line), so for this specific instance it's mostly just a curiosity at this point. But of course I (or someone else reading this later) might run into the same issue, so if it's a bug, it should be diagnosed. And as I said earlier, I'm also curious whether this is related to the frames set to Justify that won't touch the bottom in the newsletters I do (I don't currently have an example of that, as I don't remember which previous newsletters had that problem).