Text to Outline - Duplicating Text Box

[Daniel23581434cdrh]

Hi all - I know there are some strong feelings regarding outlining text in InDesign, and appreciate all the participation and helpful threads that do exist here and there. I still do have a curiousity question though; when I do outline text in my ID file (yes, my printer that I do a fair amount of work with still requires it so I'm trying to still #SupportLocal #SupportSmallBusiness) - anyway, when I do it, InDesign now creates a duplicate text box immediately on top of the existing one, and outlines the text in that new box. So essentially I end up with outlined text on 'top', with the original text box immediately underneath that still contains 'live' text. This just started within the last year; is anyone else experiencing anything like this? (For my printer I'm having to go in and delete all the text boxes with 'live' text one by one in order to just leave the outlined text in the document). Any thoughts or anyone else experiencing this? It's doing it in both brand new ID files as well as older files that are opened/convered to the newest version of ID. Thanks in advance.

[SJRiegel]

You can avoid this issue if you cans send your printer the PDF files instead of the native InDesign. That way, you leave the text live in ID, and use the preflight controls in Acrobat to outline the text.

[Willi Adelberger]

Never outline in InDesign any text for production reason:

1. You loose text frame strokes.
2. You loose text frame colors.
3. You loose Paragraph Rules above and below.
4. You loose strike through and underlines.
5. You loose paragraph shading and borders.
6. You loose automatic bullets and numbers.
7. You have problems with any automatic number, like page numbers.
8. You loose font hinting.
9. You loose cross references.
10. many things more …

If you need to provide a file with outlined fonts, export as PDF and there is in the Preflight Package of 2015 a command to make outlines of text. This is secure. But never do it in InDesign. IF THE PRINTER INISTS OR DOES IT HIMSELF, THERE ARE MANY OTHER PRINTERS ON THE MARKET.

[Laubender]

Just to add, here are the settings for outlining text in an exported PDF with Acrobat Pro DC:

You could run that Single Fix only that you can find in category: Print Production > Preflight

Most important, first click the list of Single Fix Ups and then check in "Acrobat Pro DC 2015 Profiles".

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

[Joel Cherney]

It has been a long time, but I do recall a period circa 10 years ago, when I had a contractual obligation to deliver native InDesign files with outlined Khmer text. That's what you're delivering, right? If you deliver PDF files to your printer, then Uwe's method is superior. But if you're delivering live InDesign files with text converted to outlines... are your stories threaded? That was one of the things that caused this, I recall, although the forum posts I remember about it are from a previous generation of forum software and are no longer available. I handled it by running a script to unthread all threaded stories throughout the document. 

If that's not it (and it doesn't seem to be, after I've tested it over here and not been able to reproduce it) you might try resetting your preferences.