Text Styles not performing correctly

[idealiris]

Hello, I am formatting an employee handbook for a client. I am having an issue with my paragraph and character styles not performing correctly. I am having the issue where if I apply a change to a selected part, it changes everything whether I have selected it all or not. I haven't applied the style to any other part except for a specific part I am working on. I have switched to a new document to see if that would help but it didn't seem to help. 

[Abhishek Rao]

Hi @idealiris,  

Could you please share your InDesign version and operating system details?  

It seems the issue might be due to conflicting or overridden paragraph and character styles. Ensure that you are applying character styles only for specific formatting changes (like bold or italics) and use paragraph styles for broader text formatting. If you accidentally applied paragraph styles where character styles were intended, it could affect the entire text. Try clearing overrides by selecting the text and clicking "Clear Overrides" (a plus icon) in the Paragraph Styles panel.  

If possible, please share a screen recording demonstrating the issue to help us understand it better.  

Let us know if this helps!  

Thanks,  
Abhishek Rao  

[idealiris]

I have the latest version available. I have looked into this as well. I have only selected the text that I want to make changes to. I will look at clearing the overrides again I guess.

[Peter Kahrel]

> if I apply a change to a selected part, it changes everything whether I have selected it all or not.

Paragraph styles apply to whole paragraphs. So even if you have just a few characters selected and apply a paragraph style, the whole paragraph is affected.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

When you say "it changes everything" are you referring to the selected paragraphs or everything in the handbook across all pages? In other words, how do you define "part"?

[idealiris]

So, I will highlight the text I want to add a style to. I create a new style for the new change that is to be made. I add the style to the highlighted section of text. Then I go to "edit paragraph style" where I start to try to make edits, but as soon as I change one thing, it applies the changes to the rest of the book including the highlighted text.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

It sounds as if you don't grasp how InDesign's Paragraph Styles and Character Styles work, and interact with each other. I'd recommend a few tutorial pages to give you the overall explanation —

• https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/paragraph-character-styles.html

Very basically, though —

• Paragraph Styles apply to each whole paragraph (start to paragraph end) that they are applied to. They can't be made to apply to only part of a paragraph.
• Character Styles apply only to selected text they are applied to. They are used to override or change part of a paragraph's style.
• Both styles are document wide. If you change a style, all text tagged with that style will change to match. That's... what styles are for, in a single sentence.

The tutorial page should help a lot with this. It's a very important, fundamental aspect of how ID works.