Participant

Answered

When typing in InDesign, cApS aLtErNaTe BeYoNd mY cOnTrOl

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
August 12, 2020
4 replies
3348 views

Hi all, a few of my coworkers and I are having a weird problem we wonder if you have experienced and/or have a solution for. Without a rhyme or reason that we can identify, occasionally, when typing in a text box in InDesign, it will type in AlTeRnAtInG CaPs as demonstrated in the subject line above. It happens whether or not the caps lock is on. This only happens in InDesign and yet the only solution we have found so far is to restart the computer--restarting InDesign alone will not do the trick.

Has anyone else experienced this or know what the problem may be?

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer Jeff Witchel, ACI

Another great question. We use Calibri for a LOT of our projects, so in my memory, it's only Calibri, but as I mentioned, once it starts, we can't get it to stop without restarting our computer. Changing any font attribute does not resolve the issue before then.

Also wondering if your Calibri type might be corrupted. Can possibly replace the font?

richardw78789796

Participant

I am having been experiencing exactly the same issue, only with InDesign using the latest version on a PC. Window 10 Pro. It doen't appear to happen using any other Software. Thankfully I don't experience this on my Apple laptop which means I can still get thing done in InDesign.

However it is extremely frustrating. It seems that numerous people have been experiencing this bug but as yet Adobe hasn't really acknowledged the extent of the problem and developed a solution. Hopefully they will soon.

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lornac93415749Author

Participant

Richard, I am also dismayed and a little suprised that this thread is marked as "Solved." None of the above solutions have solved the issue--we also still run into it occassionaly still.

J

janeh86969163

Participant

I also have the same problem and do NOT use Calibri font. Selecting the text and choosing "Sentence Case" does not work for me. The only think that works is to restart my computer and go into my keyboard options in my windows settings. I also keep my software up to date and am getting so frustrated with this problem happening multiple times in one day.

Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com

Legend

I doubt it's a font problem because a capital letter is a different character codepoint than its lowercase mate. For example:

The word "cats" uses Unicode glyphs 0063 (c), 0061 (a), 0074 (t), and 0073 (s).
But "CaTs" uses Unicode glyphs 0043 (C), 0061 (a), 0054 (T), and 0073 (s).

I don't think a font itself has the ability to swap a lowecase "c" for an uppercase "C" on its own. Even if the font's internal character map got corrupted, it would corrupt all instances of lowercase "c" in the entire document, for example, not just randomly as described by these posters.

Since this is only happening in Text Frames within Adobe InDesign, and it happens at random times and with random text with random fonts, this is pointing to Adobe InDesign as the source of the problem.

Remember, c and C are not the same letters/glyphs. It would take an evil genius programmer on the InDesign team to bug the program's code to do this so randomly (but so precisely...every other character). But why would they do that?

Possibly this could be a wierd error with the keyboard or its software driver.

@janeh86969163 and @Gretchen5C2B, have you switched the keyboards on your computer and tested if that corrects the problem? Or you can go through Windows Settings and update the driver for your keyboard?

But then again, if it was the physical keyboard or its driver, it would affect those characters in every program on the Windows system, not just Adobe InDesign. And it wouldn't go away with a reboot. Keyboards, keyboard drivers, and fonts are all at the system level of programming, not the application level.

I haven't had the problem on any of our Windows/InDesign systems at my shop, but I've seen it here in the forums enough times to think it's a real phantom glitch of something going on.

|    Bevi Chagnon   |  Designer, Trainer, & Technologist for Accessible Documents ||    PubCom |    Classes & Books for Accessible InDesign, PDFs & MS Office |

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Gretchen5C2B

Participant

I am having the same problem, and it is driving me batty. I can't figure out why it starts when it does, but once it starts I can't get anything to stop it. I *can* go back in and change it to Sentence Case and that works, but it's annoying as hell to keep going back to do that. Help!

Ashutosh_Mishra

Inspiring

Hi there,

Apologies for the delayed response. We're sorry to hear about your experience. Would you mind sharing version of the OS & InDesign?

Does it happen with a specific file or all?

Have you tried resetting InDesign preferences? If not, please try doing that.

**Please note that resetting preferences will remove all the custom settings and InDesign will launch with default settings. You can also take a backup of the folders in case you want to. Location is mentioned in the article.

Let us know if it helps. Looking forward to your response.

Regards,

Ashutosh

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lornac93415749Author

Participant

Hi Ashutosh,

We're using Windows 10 Pro and we do keep our InDesign up-to-date.

I am not entirely sure if it's a specific file. I'll take better notes if it happens again. But usually once it starts, it happens in any file I open.

We'll try resetting our default settings and hope that's the works.

Thank you!