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nicole_13113503
Participant
June 18, 2019
Question

Tool Panel greyed out and all tools (except Text) are inactive

  • June 18, 2019
  • 3 replies
  • 11075 views

Hi

For some reason my tool panel now only allows me to use the Text tool - the rest of the tools are inactive and unable to be selected.  I have tried rebooting, uninstalling and reinstalling the app and that hasn't worked.  I found a previous post with this same issue but i do not have touch enabled so whilst that solved their dilemma it unfortunately won't fix mine.

Any suggestions??

Thanks

      3 replies

      J
      janep51894407
      Participant
      December 6, 2023

      Wow, this has just happened to me and the story editor trick worked! Bizarre, but thank goodness this conversation is still here after all this time. Thank you!

        G
        greg21
        Participant
        September 12, 2022

        We had the same problem this morning with one of our designers MAC...what worked was to make sure that the Note Tool in the tool bar is clicked off and the rest of the tools were highlighted back on!

          Barb Binder
          Community Expert
          Barb BinderCommunity Expert
          Community Expert
          June 18, 2019

          Hi Nicole:

           

          That's how it looks when you are in Story Editor view. Choose Edit > Edit in Layout View.

           

          However, if you uninstalled/reinstalled InDesign and the issue persists then it is more than that. It's mostly likely time to rebuild the preferences and/or cache files. See https://www.rockymountaintraining.com/adobe-indesign-rebuilding-preferences-cache/ .

           

          ~Barb

          ~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training
            eleanorshanks
            eleanorshanks
            Participant
            October 29, 2019

            This happened to me too.
            I successfully rebuilt the preferences using the key commands and everything was fine.

            I used Story Editor and after closing the Story Editor window the tools stayed grayed out. 
            Something else is going on.
            I'm on Window 10 Enterprise using InDesign 14.0.3.

              J
              juliep71781108
              Participant
              August 19, 2022

              Thank you very much. It also helped me.

              I work on Windows 10. I have InD version 15.0.1 (x64) + Creative Cloud version 5.0.0.354.
              Method:
              From any text frame, just switch to the Story Editor, type something and close the Story Editor.


              THANK YOU! So weird but that worked. Something with the program, not the file because if I opened it on my work laptop (PC), it was greyed out, but on my personal macbook, it was fine! A couple different files. Thanks for saving the day!

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