Just when you thought Halloween was over, here comes something very scary.
Ever place an .INDD file in another one? In my experience it’s a nifty feature, at least if there aren’t a ton of links in the placed document bogging you down. But beware of using placed .INDD in CS4. A bug exists where not all master page items from the placed document appear in the receiving document. Even worse, you won’t notice they’re gone until you either output the document to PDF, print, or turn on High Quality Display. ID uses a proxy of the page in Typical Display, and the master items all appear in the proxy. So you think you’re OK…until you output the page.
Here’s an example. Note the running headers and folios, which are master items and have not been overridden:
Place these pages into a fresh CS4 document:
This is a crummy screenshot, but you can see the folios and headers are there. Or are they?
Turn on High Quality Display:
And voila, three out of the four master items vanish. They will not appear in exported PDF or print either. Why did the one running header on the right page appear? There seems to be a pattern in facing pages documents, that the first page of a document is OK, but all following left pages lose all master items, and right pages lose some master items. Non-facing pages documents are also affected by the bug. Stay tuned.
You can overcome the bug by overridding all master items on the pages you place (cmd+shift+opt+L). Overridden master items appear and output as expected.
Maybe the cover image on that right page could serve as a good logo for this bug. Hey, we gotta get the word out, and that’s good bug branding. Seriously, though. Beware the MMIIPINDD bug.
This article was last modified on December 19, 2021
This article was first published on November 3, 2008
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I have another weird issues with Master pages items in placed INDD files: On my Master Page, I have put a filename text variable (with no extension). when I place that InDesign file into another InDesign file, the file extension appears. Even if I override the master page item containing the filename variable, the extension still reappears when the file is placed into another InDesign document. I am on InDesign 5.5.
Rufus Deuchler – Thank you very much! I am on satellite internet so i have disabled updates completely through out the suite, this was the answer that fixed my problem!
Overall my problem was the left or even numbered facing pages would only export the background instead of all the artwork on top of it. Update your software and your left facing pages will display all of the artwork/etc in the master template.
Thanks a lot Chris! (https://creativepro.com/nasty-cs4-bug-missing-master-items-in-placed-indd.php#comment-476933) I had this exact problem in CS4 with a two-page master layout, and when I split the overlapping image into two images one for each side, the problem resolved. Yay!
have experienced the same / similar master page bug without placing another in design cs4 doc into a current one.
have created a master page in one doc and copied the items onto a master page in a 2nd doc, when exporting to pdf, in the first case everything on the master just disappeared…in another case certain objects on the master just moved totally out of place in the pdf??? took them out of the master and pasted them directly into the doc and now it exports fine. doesnt do it with all the docs (all created from the same doc too) seems to just be random. absolutely bizarre!
I had a similar problem where the footers from the master pages were not showing up on the pages when I exported them to PDF. I fixed the problem by creating a new layer and moving all of the footers to that layer. Not ideal, but a pretty easy work around.
I have InDesign CS4 and I have managed to fix this by splitting the two master pages by putting a 1 pixel gap between the two pages. This bug only exists for me if I have a shape or image or text overlapping the two pages so if you split it it fixes the problem hope this helps anyone in the future.
Just don’t have anything overlapping the two master pages!
Yes sorry to say I have Indesgin CS4 6.0.1 and I had the problem today.
Made a border for the pages of my catalogue and shapes that I created in Indesign CS2 and pasted in the master page would appear transparent on the left hand side page only. Also any text on top of the shapes were also transparent when exported to pdf. Didn’t check if they printed like this.
Tried creating the shapes from scratch and everything else I can think of and nothing. Put the shapes on another layer and it was all good.
Had a similar problem in CS2 when I tried to use one master for the left hand side page and another master for the right hand side of a spread. The left hand page would loose all text when exported or printed. I had to create twice as many master pages as required, one for every section page change. Would have been ok except this was on a 1000 page book!
Haven’t checked to see if it is the same in CS4
I’ve come across this problem quite a bit. To solve it, I put the master items that were disappearing on a new layer in InDesign.
This worked for me.
Even after the 6.0.1 update, I’m still seeing missing master page items (verso only) when exporting the InDesign file to PDF. The master items print fine from ID but don’t show up in a PDF.
Yes, I guessed that if the update was being broadcast through the Adobe Update Manager, that those would also be available for download at the same time. Which is kind of important for users who need to update more than one machine. Anyhow, I am pretty positive that the links above will get you there very shortly. Cheers.
Um, that’s great, Rufus, but the CS4 update that you’re referring to doesn’t appear to be posted at adobe.com yet. I do see it in Adobe Updater, though. It’ll probably show up on the Web site soon.
Fixed!
This update provides important fixes in the areas of Scripting, Master Pages, Digital Editions, Import/Export Graphics, as well as other miscellaneous issues.
Here are just a few specific fixes included in the dot release. See here for the full list.
? Master Page Items from a placed InDesign document are dropped when exporting to PDF.
? InDesign CS3 documents converted to InDesign CS4 reflow unexpectedly due to hyphenation limits.
? When exporting a document to .SWF, ?mailto:? hyperlinks have ?https://? appended to them, making them inoperable.
? Page turns are incorrect for right-to-left bound documents exported to SWF.
So either run your Adobe Update Managers (AUM) from the Help Menu, or download and install the updates from here:
Mac: https://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=31&platform=Macintosh
Win: https://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=31&platform=Windows
Similar, but still worse problem:
A 160 page-CS3 document which did not show any problems in CS3 (several times cleaned via “Save as” and .inx) showed up in CS 4 without ANY content in frames AT ALL.
Resizing frames shows up again text – but only in these frames (although text is running through a lot of frames).
@Jeremiah: I cannot reproduce your bug myself from those instructions. Hm. In general, INDD inside INDD has been very reliable, though there are these little bugs that make me wary. They worked them out in 5.02 or so, so I expect they’ll work them out in 6.0x….
i ran into the same bug as Jeremiah in CS3 before. hadn’t tried it yet in CS4. i never saw any logic, but as i read it i recognizee the problem…
I’ve never had much luck placing InDesign files in InDesign documents (images with clipping masks from Photoshop would have the clipping masks moved) so I wouldn’t be affected by this if I’d upgraded already, but it is surprising to see a bug like this make it into the final release…
There’s also a bug I’ve run into (and reported) in CS3 that remains in CS4.
it’s a little obscure, but I can reliably reproduce it, and I’ve run into it with several jobs.
If you have rotated overlaping images that have transparency (either an effect, or just a psd), and you place that indesign file into another and rotate it, the rotated images will come out looking like a slider puzzle.
It only happens when the flattener comes into play, so if you export to a pdf that supports transparency, you won’t see it, but if you export to X1-a or make a postscript file your output looks like this: https://thatgeek.net/misc/indd-example.pdf
I reported it right before CS4 came out, so I’m hoping it will be addressed in the first update to CS4.
Shoot me an email if you want a copy of my example files.
Actually, with Custom anchor, it doesn’t show up in your layout at all. It’s just a screen redraw error. You can see it when it’s in Preview in the Anchor Object dialog box.
But apply the setting and refresh your page and it’s gone. So it really doesn’t show up on subsequent pages, it’s just not there at all.
Which is weird anyway, and doesn’t solve anything.
In tagging the cells and looking at it in the XML, the cells headers look like they are falsely generated. Much like when David pointed out that cells merged are just a falsity, they’re not real.
No solution here, but just to say:
If you put that image inside a text frame, then anchor the text frame (containing the image)
Now, set the TEXT frame anchoring options (be careful not to select the image frame) to custom.
The Text frame appears in the column on the next page, but you don’t even see the image that is anchored inside the text frame in the header cell.
Another reader (Boaz) pointed out another “doesn’t show up in print or exported PDF” bug, and this one was in CS3 and well as CS4: Let say you anchor an object into a table cell, set it to a Custom anchor (not inline or above line), and set that table row to be a Header row.
The anchored object shows up on all subsequent pages (if the table threads to more pages). However, the object will not print or export to PDF on those pages! It only appears on page 1. Changing it to an inline or above line object fixes it, but that’s not a realistic workaround much of the time.
Yes, the ID team is aware of the bug and investigating a fix. But they do want reports of “new variants.” Let’s hope there aren’t any more.
I’m assuming this has been reported, but to be safe I’ll do so as well.
After trying several documents placed in CS4: some documents show SOME of the masterpage items, but don’t show pagenumbers…
There is something realy wrong here…(!)
Just tried placing a CS3 document in CS4: it doesn’t show any masteritems at all from the start! So the ‘picture’ of my CS3 doc in CS4 is without the master pages on my screen!
If I create a new CS4 document and place that in a CS4 layout I do see the master items but as mentioned NOT in the PDF. But a CS3 document that has a more then one master page, comes in without any masterpage items at all!
This is BAD!!
It seems that It shows master pages as long as you do not use import options to choose another page than the first page.
Ouch! Together with the PDF DataMerge bug (text variables) this .0 release means nasty things…
Think twice before installing a .0 release in production mode.