Paragraph bottom border overlaps the text

[Tomasz T]

Hello,

I would like to fix the issue of paragraph border that overlaps the last lines of the text. I tried to fix that using a GREP style to the paragraph style. I googled an advice (Fixing Over-Extended Paragraph Borders in InDesign) and following it I created a character style which applies something like 150% vertical scaling to space character. I applied this character style with the GREP: ( )(?=\w+.~a) inside the paragraph style. The GREP works and scales the last space in the last line properly, but it did not help with my issue of overlaping the last line. After opening the files in the book everything looks fine:

Here is the example how the border should work.

As soon as I make changes (e.g. adding a new page or a line of text), the bottom border starts to overlap the text:

The paragraph border overlaps the text

Any change made inside the bordered paragraph, e.g. insterting a new space ed deleting it helps to put the border at the right place. I try to do it each time the issue occurs. Unfortunately, I have over 30 places with this kind of border and it is hard to check all of them each time I want to export the book to PDF.

Please, could you give me any advice?

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

Can you post your Paragraph Border settings from your paragraph style or share the document?

[Tomasz T]

As soon as I find the right way to attach the idd file, I will do it.

For now I attatch the screenshot of border settings. It is the Polish version of Indesign. I'll try to swittch it to English, but it will take a while.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

You can put the file in the Creative Cloud folder and share the link if you wish.

[Tomasz T]

Thank you for the advice. I managed to upload the indt file (indd was not accepted). Here is the link: https://shared-assets.adobe.com/link/9f1c0504-dc8c-4383-6def-89cc4fb4d181 I hope it will work.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

The GREP-applied character style at the end of the paragraph seems to be confusing the "Merge Consecutive Borders and Shading with the same Settings" option. The odd thing is I could not get the problem to appear consistantly--in fact, I could not see it when I opened your document. I had to mess around with it to get the problem to occur. When I added a trailing space at the end of a previous paragraph, the problem went away for me. 

Interestingly, I removed the last two GREP settings and the problem went away, and I did not see any problem with the border. As long as you keep in mind the 16 pt. baseline grid, you should need to worry about the border space. (I usually like to divide my grid into small increments for dealing with paragraph space--in this case, I would use an 8 pt. grid.)

[Tomasz T]

Thank you for looking into my file.

Yes, its is as you wrote. The problem appears when something is changed and dissappears when the paragraph style or paragrap itselt is being updated. The whole book is composed of ca. 35 chapters (files) and adding a page somewhere else affects the other chapters and the borders inside. Each time I export the file I have to check it carefuly. I would like to find a permanent solution.

I have just tried to change the refrence for the bottom line to the baseline grid but the problem still appears.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

It might be worth reporting it as a possible bug at (keep in mind I didn't spend hours discecting the file and styles):

https://www.adobe.com/products/wishform.html

[Tomasz T]

Hello, an update in this topic from Adobe Customer Care for those who are facing the same problem:

"An Internal bug has been submitted for the paragraph border overlapping and it will be fixed in upcoming updates.

As per the feedback shared by the product team, they have checked it on Mac OS as well and the issue not very frequent when working with Indesign.

Also, they suggested closing all the documents when all the required changes to documents are done and then you can export as PDF. That should not not have this issue".

I hope you will find it useful.

Looking forward to an update of Indesign. After that I will match the topic as resolved.