Participant

Answered

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

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
March 3, 2019
11 replies
11051 views

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

Correct answer Steve Werner

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

H

hatshatahsththstst

Known Participant

Also still having this problem.

Too busy forcing animations and cloud crap instead of providing a workable tool.

S

Sim5259756

Participant

Depends on what you are doing. This happens when for example I created a page of sticker lables in InDesgn with all the same word on each lable. If I duplicate the page and want to have the next page be a different word. When I select all 30 labels on the duplicate page the "selection" option doesnt show. I dont want the "Document" option since it will change the previous page data which is not what I want. For my situation "Selection" isnt the right option anyway but instead "Stories" is. This personally worked for my situation.

B

BIDOUN

Participant

Constantly have to restart indesign while working because of this issue. Please fix it. Absurd bug that affects everyday use constantly, spanning multiple versions of indesign. Inexcusable.

H

Henrik Lindqvist

Inspiring

+one. It's ridiculous. This bug has been hanging around for years.Fix it. Fix it. Fix it.

L

Laubender

Community Expert

Hi Henrik,

best do a bug report at InDesign UserVoice or support one that is already there with your vote.

If you found a bug report at UserVoice or if you did one yourself, please share the link to that report here so that others who are also affected get a chance for voting as well. InDesign UserVoice is here:

https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601180-adobe-indesign-bugs

FWIW: I'm not affected on my Windows 10 machine.

Perhaps a MacOS only issue?

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Professional )

dzgnr89

Inspiring

Facing this issue on a regular basis. Deselecting the text box, working on something else like drawing some rectangles, doesn't bring the option for "search selection" back in the find/change box.

Enclosed is a short screen recording of what exactly happens.

2022-05-06_10-22-00.zip

dzgnr89

Inspiring

I am using latest 17.2 update of InDesign 2022 and still facing this issue.

M

mordaskyt

Participant

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.

H

Henrik Lindqvist

Inspiring

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.

J

jpmackey

Participant

This has been an ongoing an unpredictable bug for years for me. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. I just have to go back and do it another day (which can make certain parts of my job very difficult obviously). Adobe needs to address bugs like this instead of making stupid changes like reversing the free transform function.

TᴀW

Legend

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

L

Laubender

Community Expert

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 )

C

clintp1

Inspiring

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

C

clintp1

Inspiring

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

C

clintp1

Inspiring

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

Community Expert

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.

L

Laubender

Community Expert

Hi arjun2,

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

What helped: Deselect all. Select again.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

pushabutton123

Participant

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.