Why would a freshly opened document think it's modified?

[OsakaWebbie]

For some documents but not all, right after the document finishes loading, an asterisk will appear in front of the filename, indicating that InDesign thinks there are unsaved changes. Edit->Undo is still grayed out, so there is no action that InDesign thinks I have taken, so what is it doing? There are no errors, no broken links, no missing fonts. If at that point I close the document or ID overall, naturally ID will ask if I want to save changes. It doesn't matter if I say yes or no - the next time I open that document, it will do the same thing.

[Mike Witherell]

It would change if:

1. It is an older version file. The act of opening it would reflow the text; thus changing it.

2. If links had been modified, and you updated links; then it would be different.

3. Maybe you have installed an event-listening script that acts to change something when opened.

4. Similarly, when you have a variable that pulls the current date, the file has changed.

5. Fonts are all present and the same, I suppose?

[OsakaWebbie]

Michael:

1. It happens even if I save, close, and re-open the same document immediately.

2. No links have been touched.

3. I don't know how to write scripts for ID, but the document I'm currently looking at was inherited from someone else (a couple years ago) and reused repeatedly, so you caused me to wonder about this one. But opening the Scripts panel and then expanding the whole list, there are no scripts in this document from another one I made from scratch recently that does not exhibit the strange behavior. I looked for a way to "disable all scripts" or something else non-destructive to test whether a script is the cause, but I don't see anything like that - if you have an idea, let me know.

4. I don't know about variables, and there is no current date in the document I'm currently looking at (it's a quarterly magazine, and nothing is automatic that I know of).

5. Yes, fonts are fine - all or almost all are Typekit.

Steve: My InDesign is CC2017. This particular document has probably been through a number of versions and converted (I have no idea when the first one was created from scratch - possibly even before CC), but it's currently current. Like I said, I can save, close, and immediately re-open, and it will still add that asterisk in about one second.

[OsakaWebbie]

Addendum: I just tried a different document that was not inherited from others but is the current version of a Save As that was originally done in an older version of InDesign (my yearly New Years postcard - the Japanese version of a Christmas card custom). It also does the asterisk thing. So it's definitely not scripts (I have never made a script, and I'm the only person who has ever touched the New Years cards), but perhaps there is something down in the file that knows it was originally converted, even though it's not now. If so, there should be lots of people experiencing this.

[Steve Werner]

There could be corruption in the file(s).

See what happens if you have the file as an IDML file (File > Save As > InDesign CS4 or later [IDML]). Then reopen in InDesign and resave.

Clean corrupt files by exporting to .IDML or .INX

[OsakaWebbie]

I took my New Years postcard document (because it's much smaller than the magazine and I know its complete history), saved it as IDML, opened that, saved as a new INDD file, closed, and re-opened. Same behavior - it shows an asterisk and expects me to save before closing.

By the way, I was mistaken about my app version - I have CC2018 (13.0.1 x64, to be precise).

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Side topic: Looking at the files, I'm baffled as to how IDML files can contain all the information.

INDD needs 1.33 MB even after its "cleansing", but IDML apparently holds the same information in 112 kB? Magic?

[Steve Werner]

The only time I think I've observed that is when I'm opening a file created by a previous version of InDesign. Then it also shows the label "[Converted]" after the file name.

What version of InDesign are you running? What's the version of the file you're opening?

[TᴀW]

Check you Startup Scripts folder. Open the Script panel in InDesign, right click on the main Application folder and choose "Show in Explorer (or Finder on Mac)". This will open up that folder on your harddrive, and you should see a "Startup Scripts" folder. Check that it's empty.

IDML files don't save previews of links or the file itself -- that may be why they're smaller.

Ariel

[OsakaWebbie]

My C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe InDesign CC 2018\Scripts\startup scripts folder has only one file in it: ForceDirectory.txt The entire contents of that file is:

Short Story:

This file exists solely to force the source code version control

system to create this directory/folder.

Not likely to be causing anything strange with documents, and I suspect everyone has this file.

I did a bunch of experiments, and my hypothesis based on the observable evidence is that it happens whenever a document contains a PNG that has transparency (whether it's linked or embedded doesn't seem to matter). It doesn't matter whether the document was created in an older app version and converted or created fresh in 2018. As soon as I remove all transparency PNGs, the symptom stops, and when I put one in a fresh document, the symptom starts. Can one of you test my hypothesis?

[OsakaWebbie]

Can anyone verify my observation about PNG images?

There are two ways that PNGs can have transparency: an alpha channel or a certain color rendered transparent. I have no idea whether both or only one type cause the behavior, because I don't know how to tell which type of transparency my images have. If you know how I can tell the difference so I can test both in InDesign documents, let me know. But I'm pretty confident of my basic theory that at least one of those types of files causes the "unsaved changes" issue in ID documents.

If it's confirmed, should I report it to Adobe somehow?

[tlmurray23]

I get the asterisk for all documents in a book: No dates or scripts, but they all have at least one cross-reference, a linked graphic, and a variable for the header that points to the chapter. I figure the asterisk is triggered by ID checking these items. You mentioned you didn't have any "broken links", but do you have a link at all?

But . . . just now I did an idml export of some chapters, and one of them no longer gives me an asterisk. Odd.

[pinv]

It was confirmed in another post (InDesign opens documents as unsaved ) that this might have to do with the "Match Pasteboard to Theme Colours" setting. Turning this off removed the asterisk for me.