When drawing a rectangle it is just a rectangle without color nor line thickness

[White Vanilla]

When drawing a rectangle it is just a rectangle without color nor line thickness. Why is that?

I set the line thickness, I set the color, it does not work. Why is that?

[Scott Citron]

I'm trying to understand your question. Can you please explain further?

[White Vanilla]

I type M, then I get a rectangle but it does not have the set line thickness nor the set color.

[jmlevy]

I set the line thickness, I set the color, it does not work

Are you sure that the rectangle is selected?

[White Vanilla]

Sorry I was not clear enough. When placing a rectangle, I should be able to set the line thickness and the color. However, when placing the rectangle, the rectangle does not have the line thickness nor the color and is just an 'invisible rectangle' which is a problem while trying to mark things with it, continously setting the line thickness and the color over and over again.

[jmlevy]

You could make an object style:

or set stroke color and thickness, and fill color before drawing any rectangle

[Derek Cross]

Ask particular questions on this forum of course, but you would save youself a lot of heartache if you got some basic training. LinkedinLearning, for example, offer online video tutorials which give step-by-step advice on each of the InDesign features, you can get a  free 30-day trial.

In answer to your particular issue, have a look at Object Styles.

[rob day · Accepted solution]

When you create a rectangle the current Fill and Stroke settings are used for the new rectangle. The Fill and Stroke can be set in a number of places and if both are set to [None] there will be no fill or stroke: