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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