This is what wastes entire days in InDesign

[Abhishek Rao]

Hi @OscarFromOSI,

Thanks for bringing this up. I tested the same workflow on my end using InDesign 20.5 on Windows 11, but couldn't reproduce the issue. Could you confirm the version of InDesign and the details of your OS, so we can narrow this down further? It would also help to try resetting InDesign preferences after creating a backup, as that often resolves unexpected glitches. You can follow the steps here: https://adobe.ly/4nWft2m. Please give this a try and let me know your update.

Best,
Abhishek

[OscarFromOSI]

Thanks for the reply. This is version 20.5 on Windows 11.

The document linked above is not correct. It says, 

press Shift+Ctrl+Alt. Click Yes when asked if you want to delete preference files.

This key combo does nothing.

But anyway.... I deleted the preferences and tried again, and got the same result. I've attached a file you can try it on.

[Peter Spier]

The document linked above is not correct. It says, 

press Shift+Ctrl+Alt. Click Yes when asked if you want to delete preference files.

This key combo does nothing.

You have to be VERY FAST with the keys on Windows to use the keyboard method. Sounds like you've also found the other alternatives.

[Mike Witherell]

That key combo thing is no longer necessary, since they put a reset button in general preferences. You can just click it and restart the app.

[rob day]

Hi @OscarFromOSI , If you are using Paragraph Borders and Shading to create the border, check the Width setting and make sure it’s not set to Text:

[OscarFromOSI]

Thanks for that useful reference.

Unfortunately I don't want the box to be as wide as the (sole) column.

[rob day]

Unfortunately I don't want the box to be as wide as the (sole) column.

It gets tricky, but the boxed text can be narrower—I’ve attached a sample .IDML with Paragraph Styles for the boxed head and list. Note, to merge the head and list paragraphs they have to have the same Borders and Shading settings, which is the case in this example.

[OscarFromOSI]

Thanks for taking the time to do that. I really appreciate it. You can demonstrate the same thing by simply activating bullets on one line of my example, then right-clicking on the "Boxed note" style and redefining it from the selection. Then the box goes around the bullets.

While that works around the bug, it adds a niche style to an entire book for an extremely rare formatting occurrence. I work with a team of people who will be tasked with converting a load of documentation that has been developed for decades with no styles at all, just ad-hoc formatting. The style collection must remain as small as possible, or the project will face considerable resistance and messy execution. If I added yet another style for every unique hack that was done to make a document's text fit on a page (for example), it would become untenable.

[Frans v.d. Geest]

This looks more like a user error to me to be honest... Check your paragraph borders settings.

[OscarFromOSI]

How is it "user error" when the behavior varies from attempt to attempt? In what world is putting the bullet outside the border the desired outcome?

[Frans v.d. Geest]

I can not replicate it here other than using Text width settings as Rob Day shows...

[OscarFromOSI]

Good to know that you can replicate it. The box needs to be the width necessary to acommodate the text, not across the whole page.

[Frans v.d. Geest]

I can NOT replicate it as bug, just as an intended setting.

[OscarFromOSI]

There's a setting that says, "Put bullets outside the paragraph; and only do it if there are two lines with bullets, not just one?" That's a very specific setting.

[Frans v.d. Geest]

You have soft (shift) returns that should not be there. Remove them, set-up a clean (indented) Paragraph style and retry.

[OscarFromOSI]

Thanks, but there's only one of those and it's after the top word. If you remove it, it doesn't fix the problem.

Also, this style is indented.

[rob day]

Also, I’m not sure if it’s causing trouble in your case, but creating white space via the paragraph’s space before or after setting rather than paragraph returns is better for style consistency:

[OscarFromOSI]

I would normally never use such hokey formatting, but this problem required a bunch of experimental gymnastics to work around. And the "fix" often breaks for no apparent reason.

[Mike Witherell]

Hey Oscar,

In your movie, I notice that the first paragraph has a soft return; the second has a hard return. Use hard returns.

Also, use a paragraph style; not direct formatting. Otherwise, the previous experts have already identified your problem. To make your entire day productive in InDesign, have you considered some training? Thorough training in the use of InDesign makes for enormous gains in productivity.

[OscarFromOSI]

Thanks Mike. I do use paragraph styles exclusively throughout the document in general. This video captures just one experiment of many, to work around the problem.

Also... nobody has identified the problem. I have had training, thanks.

[Mike Witherell]

Hi Oscar,

In your video, you appear to have a boxed text style applied to the text sample, but then proceed to click on the bulleted list button. This causes an override to the paragraph style; and confuses it. It would be better to go into the paragraph style to add on the bulleting. Also, in the downloadable example, the text is all centered, but bulleting pretty much demands being left aligned. That means your centered title over the bullet points would have to be  a separate style (like Boxed-Note-Centered). Also, when you make paragraph styles, take care to not have them be Based On: Basic Paragraph Style. That can trigger errors and changes as you copy n paste content. Next, I notice that there are repeating tabs running across the Boxed Note paragraph style. Remove them all except the one that coincides with the difference between left indent and first line indent. Since you are working with clean styles, make sure to remove the leading spacebar space from before each bulleted line. Take care to remove the unwanted Normal paragraph style whenever it invades your document. I have attached a cleaner revision demonstrating good paragraph style practices.

[OscarFromOSI]

Thanks. First, I do not want bullets on all uses of this style. Nor do I need a new style for this rare occurrence. If the application of bullets "confuses" the software, that's a defect that should be fixed.

• The centering of the text in this case is not relevant; the behavior is the same if you left-justify it.
• The space in front of the characters in this case was necessary because no setting would allow fine adjustment of the distance between the bullet and the text. Tiny changes caused wild jumps in the distance. Normally the hanging-indent (the split left-margin) control in the Tabs dialog would work, but that had to be in a nonsensical position to bring the bullet itself inside the box. And of course that POS control wastes another hour of your day by refusing to respond more than 1/5 of the time even if you happen to click on the one pixel that allows you to move it instead of adding a tab on top of it.
• The tabs in the style are necessary for lining up text elsewhere in the document.

I don't use the Normal style, but the inept style-handling across InDesign books has made its removal needlessly time-consuming to bother with at the moment. I've never encountered cutting & pasting problems due to Basic Paragraph. I've seen this admonishment before, but nobody has ever provided specifics.