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emiliam6297024
Participant
March 23, 2022
Question

Unused styles showing up as used in document

  • March 23, 2022
  • 3 replies
  • 656 views

Hello!

So I am trying to clean up the paragraph styles in my document, and after doing an audit of all of the text in the document I've narrowed down to a list of styles that are no where to be found. However, when I click "select unused styles," the ones that aren't in my doc aren't selected. When I go to the Find Format tool, there are 0 instances of those styles in my document. But if I try to delete the styles, I get met with a warning. Whats going on? I can't figure out where these styles are being used, and I desperately need to clean up the styles in this document. Any and all answers greatly appreciated! Please help me find the poltergeist in my doc!

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3 replies

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Nedlaw
Legend
March 23, 2022

Your doc may be carrying what I call "invisible overrides." ID may not report them, but they're still there. I discovered this while working on an epub. To see overrides, click the view overrides toggle on the paragraph menu. It's the icon to the left of the lightning bolt.

 You may be surprised by the inadvertent overrides you find. Preflight can also find them.

-j

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    emiliam6297024Author
    Participant
    March 23, 2022

    Oh! That's actually good to know. I never really understood what that little icon meant, and didn't want to run the risk of screwing something up by clicking it. I'll try that out. Thank you! 

    Diane Burns
    Diane Burns
    Inspiring
    March 25, 2022

    Agree with comments by Willi and Nedlaw. I had not thought about the based on issue, especially if you did not create the file originally. If the leading the styles is causing quirky things to happen, you could make the "colorful "style Willie mentions and change the styles you want to get rid of to that. That will show you any based on relationships pretty quickly.

    with all this going on, it's still wouldn't be a bad idea to save it out to .idml just to clean it up

    Willi Adelberger
    Community Expert
    Willi AdelbergerCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    March 23, 2022

     

    Those paragraph or character styles might be in use by other styles which are based on them. Never delete those styles or you will get a mess.

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      emiliam6297024Author
      Participant
      March 23, 2022

      Good to know, thank you! I'm just having a hard time finding where the styles are used by other styles. I've been looking for a script to do it for me, but no luck. Any idea how to see what is being used where? I tried the format finder but it isn't giving me any results. 

      Willi Adelberger
      Community Expert
      Willi AdelbergerCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      March 23, 2022

      Make a copy of the document. Work here now. Do some nonsense to the styles you do not find anywhere, like a color causing eye cancer. If another style is inheriting this property it is dependend from this style.

      Diane Burns
      Diane Burns
      Inspiring
      March 23, 2022

      You can always delete them and when the warning appears, simply change them to "Basic Paragraph" or whatever style is the equivalent of your "body text" style. 

      Hard to say why it's happening, sounds like "gunk" to use the technical term. 😊

      You could always try saving the file out as .idml, by doing a Save As and choosing the format for CS4 IDML. Then re-open the file and see if the unused styles get properly selected for deletion.

        Willi Adelberger
        Community Expert
        Willi AdelbergerCommunity Expert
        Community Expert
        March 23, 2022

        Your recommendation is dangerous:

        1. Never use [Basic Style] anyway, as it is causing problems as its definition is unsure.
        2. Deleting a style and changing to another style can cause huge damage, if other styles are based on that style. If a style is not applied directly, it might be in use by the style definition of another style. A character style might be used inside a paragraph style or for the definition of another style or for some functionalities hidden on the first view. A paragraph style might be in use for another paragraph style or is found inside the definition of a cell style, an object style or a table of content style or some other hidden functionality. If you say select all unused, you can delete those styles, but all other styles are woven into the document in often complicated ways. Deleting them causes a mess. Don't do that.
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