Weird: Baseline and margin anomaly on ONE page of 100

[PD in Waterloo ON]

Hello ... Not a fulltime ID user, but pretty experienced on basics+. I pulled text from a Word doc into an ID doc. The resulting doc is 100 pages. All the text is left-justified, two-columns. On Page 4—and on no other page—the text in the left column is hanging over the left edge of the margin by a tiny little bit, a point or less. The text on this page starts in the middle of a paragraph, but this margin-overhang anomaly continues down the left column before correcting in the right column and in all subsequent columns on all subsequent pages!

As well, while all text is locked to the baseline (both the baseline and leading are set to the same 0p13.2), the second line of text skips a baseline, creating an unwanted vertical space of exactly 0p13.2 between the first line and the second. Again, this anomaly happens only on Page 4 and nowhere else in the document! Here's a screen grab:

At first I suspected some kind of oddity carried over from the Word doc. I have turned on Invisible Characters, thinking there might be a buried retrun or soft-return, but nothing doing there. I've backspaced the offending text onto the previous page, but it just obediently backs up and aligns properly on the previous page, while the text lower on the affected page moves up and retains the two anomalies. I've cut a few lines of text from the top of the affected page, and the remaing text pulls to the top as expected, but still retaining the anomalies.

I'm at my wits' end. If anyone has any suggested fixes I might try, I would be much obliged.

[PD in Waterloo ON]

ADDING: I just noticed that starting on Page 4 (the affected page), the text is not in columns, though the original columns option was applied to all content. Indeed, none of the text after Page 4 is in columns, either. I went back and used Layout > Margins and Columns to set the text in 2 columns, and while the dialog box says the text is in 2 columns, it actually isn't after Page 3.

Curiouser and curiouser.

[Robert Tkaczyk · Accepted solution]

What if you delete this one spread? 

Will the problem remain? 

[PD in Waterloo ON]

I did, and it did. Now fixed.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

This is a hard one to diagnose without seeing the file. From your screen grab, at first there seems to be a screen redraw issue because, not only is your text shifted left, the column grid line right at the "gap" also jags to the left; that's not normal, so there might be a corruption in the file. Try delete that particular spread and move that copy to a set of new pages, or save the file as IDML and reopen from that to attempt to erradicate the corruption.

Since you mentioned 13.2, that sounds like you're using automatic leading (on 11 point text presumambly), and that can cause all sorts of issues, so if even one character is a different size, that will affect the autoleading, and if you have snapped to baseline turned on, it might see one line "taller" than 13.2 and pop it to the next snapped baseline. Also: as the number rounding accuracy in Word is not as good as Indesign', it might be a bit of apples and oranges.

Personally, I always recommend never using autoleading, but that's a personal choice.

Also, make sure there's no other object on that page (like a blank text frame) that might be a causing a text wrap issue if you have that turned on.

Can you share the file? (i.e. no need for the whole 100pages.. just a few)

[PD in Waterloo ON]

Brad ... Thanks so much for the thoughtful reply. I did not have the leading on "Auto"; I learned a while ago that manual is better, for the reasons you accurately cite. Other problems also popped up, so I started over and imported the Word file as plain text, which seems to have solved several problems. Thanks again for the prompt and helpful reply!

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

Glad it worked itself out! (despite the extra work!)

[PD in Waterloo ON]

Funny... doing it a second time while incorporating the lessons from the problems of the first made it all pretty quick!