Text skipping frames

[prestonh44138609]

Hi—can't find an existing thread with this exact issue, unless I'm not using the right keywords. I don't think I can post my file for confidentiality reasons, so I will do my best to describe:

I am working on a large report with a simple text frame on each page. (There are photo pages too, but they are separate—photos and text never on same page, so I don't think text wrap is relevant.) I have my keep options set to keep 2 lines together at start and end of each paragraph. I also have a lot of footnotes; keep options for footnotes are to keep all lines in paragraph together.

My issue seems to come about when I apply any character styles or manual overrides to either of those paragraph styles, let's say changing text color or adding a superscript—sometimes, but not always, a big chunk of the relevant body paragraph will skip a whole text frame/page and resume on the next one. (That is, it doesn't look like a page break, it looks like two page breaks. There are NO break characters hidden in my text.)  Often I get a very glitchy behavior where InDesign can't decide whether to do this "skip" or not, and it will alternate with every stroke I type, making the content leap back and forth across the blank page that shouldn't be there.

So my question is: what setting might I be overlooking that is overiding my keep options? Or is there something else I should be looking at? Happy to provide more info if it helps diagnose.

Thanks in advance--

PH

[Eric Dumas]

Hi,

I experienced similar issues in the past and reapplying the Paragraph styles helped to fix skips. 

I use the custom shortcuts to quickly reapply styles or update content in source file (like MS Word) then refresh links to automate the update and styling.

I hope this makes sense.

[David Popham]

Things to check when text skips a frame:

Text Wrap

• Is there an item (maybe invisible) with Text Wrap applied that is pushing text off of the page? Use View > Extras > Show Frame Edges to check.

Keep Options

• Check Start Paragraph setting
• Check Keep with Previous and Keep with Next settings (heads set to Keep with Next, first paragraph style set to Keep with Previous, etc.)
• Check Keep Lines Together > All Lines in Paragraph

You mentioned that paragraphs must keep 2 lines at the beginning and end together and that all lines in footnotes must stay together. If you have a lot of footnotes, and particularly if the footnotes are lengthy, that can lead to InDesign constantly deciding on-the-fly which relationship to honor when they clash because of a lack of space on the page. Throw in having heads that must stay with the paragraphs that follow and there is a significant amount of complexity to the decisions that it must make. Try turning off Keep settings one at a time to isolate which one might be the main culprit.

No Break applied

• Does any content have No Break formatting applied, particularly a long string of text? To check, with the problematic text selected, click on the menu in the Character panel and see whether No Break has a checkmark or a dash.

[prestonh44138609]

Hmmm, thanks both. I've gone down the list, and unfortunately nothing resolved the issue. I even turned off keep options globally, and the issue persists. Re-applying my paragraph styles does not fix the issue.

Again, the crucial element seems to be not having a "pure" paragraph style throughout the paragraph. The moment I make any sort of modification to even one character, InDesign adds that break...