• Global community
    • Language:
      • Deutsch
      • English
      • Español
      • Français
      • Português
  • 日本語コミュニティ
    Dedicated community for Japanese speakers
  • 한국 커뮤니티
    Dedicated community for Korean speakers
Exit
0

Unused styles showing up as used in document

Community Beginner ,
Mar 23, 2022 Mar 23, 2022

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

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!

TOPICS
Bug , How to

Views

279

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Advisor ,
Mar 23, 2022 Mar 23, 2022

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

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.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Expert ,
Mar 23, 2022 Mar 23, 2022

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

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.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Beginner ,
Mar 23, 2022 Mar 23, 2022

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Thank you! I actually followed this advice and haven't seen any issues, yet. We shall see. It seems as if there are lots of little nit-picky styles creating chaos in my files. So annoying!

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Expert ,
Mar 23, 2022 Mar 23, 2022

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

 

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.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Beginner ,
Mar 23, 2022 Mar 23, 2022

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

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. 

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Expert ,
Mar 23, 2022 Mar 23, 2022

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

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.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Engaged ,
Mar 23, 2022 Mar 23, 2022

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

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.

adobe-image.png

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

-j

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Beginner ,
Mar 23, 2022 Mar 23, 2022

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

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! 

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Advisor ,
Mar 24, 2022 Mar 24, 2022

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

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

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Advisor ,
Mar 25, 2022 Mar 25, 2022

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

LATEST

"deleting" the styles 🙂

(Reply edit function not behaving)

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines