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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
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:
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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:
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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
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Oh I see the link in your reply. Thanks!
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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.
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So you did figure it out? What has changed, exactly?
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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.
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Ok. This worked. Thank you!
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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?
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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.
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It may not have been clear but you are not the person I was responding to. I was responding this this comment:
"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.
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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).
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Hello Steve, thanks for the advice about how to complain.
Here we're talking about a bug that:
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.
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Hi arjun2,
also came accross this behavior that option Selection wasn't available.
What helped: Deselect all. Select again.
Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( ACP )
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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 (_._)
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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.
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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 )
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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
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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
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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.
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Thanks for the work around. Works perfectly. I would like to add that you don't have to actually replace anything for your work around to work. I search items that I know it won't find, and it works also!
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This is a really annoying bug.
For occasions when Selection is missing and nothing brings it back, and you just cannot be bothered to restart InDesign, run the following one-line script. It assumes you have selected something in InDesign and have set up the GREP find/change as needed.
app.selection[0].changeGrep();
Or, if you want to execute a regular find/change (not GREP), then this:
app.selection[0].changeText()
This won't bring back the "Selection" option though...
Ariel
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This bug persists in the most current version of InDesign and this thread should definately not be marked "Solved" the only way I get this option to re-appear is to restart InDesign. Frustrating.
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Confirmed. Restart is the only solution. This bug has been hanging around for years which suggests it's buried deep in the code somewhere and probably hard to replicate.