Why is find/change missing "selection" as option to search?

[hankhead]

I am working in Indesign CC 2019 on a document that will not show "selection" when perfoming find/change.

It only show document as the option to search. How do I restore all the options (selection, story, etc.).  ??  Mike

[Steve Werner · Accepted solution]

In Find/Change, the Selection option only appears when you have made a selection in text. It's working in InDesign CC 2019 for me as you can see in this screen capture:

If it's not working, you might try restoring InDesign preferences:

Set preferences in Adobe InDesign 

[hankhead]

Thanks Steve.

I think I tried that but certainly will when I get back to work Monday; maybe I didn't! On a deadline.

How do I restore the Indesign Preferences if I need to?

Mike

[hankhead]

Oh I see the link in your reply. Thanks!

[pushabutton123]

This behavior is super confusing in CC 2020. Spent 20 minutes try to figure out why story and selection wouldn't show. Thanks for another unnecessary change to something that wasn't broken for the last 20 years.

[Jongware]

So you did figure it out? What has changed, exactly?

[dzgnr89]

I have faced this multiple times in version CC2018, CC2019 and again today in CC2020. Even when the story or selection is selected, the find/change box doesn't show the respective option. Restarting InDesign always fixes the issue for me. 

[joshuao20030862]

Ok. This worked. Thank you!

[J335987207ovn]

Years pass by, tons and tons of money are paid monthly by so many users across the globe, but this problem remains. Any other solution that doesn't disrupt the working process?

[Steve Werner]

You seem to be complaining about either "restarting InDesign" or "restoring InDesign preferences" being disruptive to the working process.

This isn't an InDesign issue, it's a general software issue. Applications which are very complex (including especially InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, Acrobat and others) are storing a lot of data  in memory, and unless you restart your computer with some frequency, little bits of it can become temporarily changed.  Rather than complaining about that (because it will not change), it's better to learn to get good as following such good software practices.

[anthonyg47938380]

Thank you for your message. It turns out I am a picky computer user (not to mention that generally adobe users are knowledgeable about computers) and mine is always in good condition and health. I have recently reinstalled my OS, and also I use both windows and macOS versions of Indesign. The problem is still there, and it just takes 5 min of usage after this problem starts.

Please refrain from providing unuseful comments and help.


Sent from Outlook for iOS<>

[Steve Werner]

It may not have been clear but you are not the person I was responding to. I was responding this this comment:

@J335987207ovn 

"Years pass by, tons and tons of money are paid monthly by so many users across the globe, but this problem remains. Any other solution that doesn't disrupt the working process?

The entire thread started in 2019 and was originally about a much different topic entirely.

[jpmackey]

The short of it is, close out InDesign and restart the app, and if that doesn't work, restart the whole computer. It seems to work for me every time. It's annoying and obviously the issue isn't one that Adobe is going to take the time to address (and yes, I get that it's a memory issue for the computer itself, and yes, restarting your computer from time to time is a good idea anyway. But this is a problem that a lot of people are coming across and if you don't know why it's happening, it's very frustrating and Adobe needs to find a way for the software to address the issue to the average user who does not have experience in data management. Maybe a message box informing the user to restart or something rather than just greying out the option in a mysterious fashion).

[Rishabh_Tiwari]

Hi jpmackey,

Sorry for the delay in response. Thank you for sharing the possible troubleshooting steps, I am sure it will help other community members. I'll also share your feedback with the team.

Thanks

Rishabh

[J335987207ovn]

Hello Steve, thanks for the advice about how to complain.

Here we're talking about a bug that:

1. is: a drop-down menu that bugs out an option, making it disappear when it should appear
2. Is very clear, strongly identifiable, easy to single out, that's been there for years.
3. Is not windows being frozen because of the workload or similar computing overload issues
4. The rest of the whole application (enormous fantastic work machine) works as intended (for me)

Under all possible points of view this is a bug, and as suggested by the client support, should be signaled in these forums. And yes soon or later it WILL be fixed, just look at indesign, it's more and more amazing every edition.

After years of no solution in sight (because yeah it has persited through different versions) I ask again in a dusty page, because yes, it gets a bit annoying to rely on a workaround (restarting is a workaround, not "good software practice", in 2023)

Your attitude in watering down this into "softwares will always be bugged, please restart" is nothing useful to solve this specific problem, rather silencing it.

[Deadly Fredly]

Yeah, gotta back the complainer here. Adobe has a poor record of addressing common bugs (there's been one bug that's hit me with GREP search & replace for a decade+ now; I got tired of reporting it because they never do anything about it) and make no mistake, this is a bug. The software having no idea that text is selected suggests the software has no idea about its core functionality. Which, y'know, sometimes the evidence supports. 

[adriang8089926]

I agree that this is an InDesign bug that disrupts workflow. We shouldn't have to constantly quit Indesign and restart it in order for a simple function to remain. Also, it's not appropriate to tell someone what disrupts their workflow. 

[Rishabh_Tiwari]

Hi,

Sorry to hear about the trouble. Have you tried the suggestions shared in the correct answer of this thread? If it's still not working, please share the version of InDesign & OS. We'll try our best to assist you with this.

Thanks

Rishabh

[Laubender]

Hi arjun2,

also came accross this behavior that option Selection wasn't available.

What helped: Deselect all. Select again.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

[clintp1]

This has been happening to me even when i have things selected. First it started in the "text" tab. now i cant search selected anywhere? Having to dump preferences is not viable when you have extensive workspace and short cut key settings its just a pain in the (_._)

[jmlevy]

Having to dump preferences is not viable when you have extensive workspace and short cut key settings its just a pain […]

Custom wokspaces and shortcut sets are stored in different files than preferences. So, resetting preferences don't make you loose them.

[Laubender]

Hi clintp1,

as I said above, try the following:

[1] Close the Find/Change panel.

[2] Deselect all.

[3] Select the text again.

[4] Open the Find/Change panel.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

[clintp1]

I have....many...many times. even restarted and that worked for about 2 selections. then back to missing again. but available in text search now. about to restart again and see what happens

[clintp1]

AHHHH ok found a work around. 

If you have selected something and opened the Find/Change panel and there is no "selection" option, use any other option then just apply any small inconcequential change. It will then automatically show 'Selection' and you can continue on your way.

well it worked for me anyway. Good luck

[dzgnr89]

Tried this trick. Not working in Indesign 2021. v 16.0.1. 

This is such an annoying bug! Deselecting, applying insignificant changes to text, opening a new file, nothing worked . I eventually had to restart InDesign to fix this issue.