CreativePro Forum

Return to Member Forum

• Author
  Posts
• • May 19, 2015 at 7:13 pm #75495
    Patti Moran

    Member

    Hi there,

    I have an InDesign CC document that’s set up with about 100 pages of two-column linked text boxes, each of which contains a series of stacked tables that flow from one page to the next. The file was created by a different designer who is no longer available for consultation.

    Each table within the two-column linked text boxes consists of two parts – a picture box on the left and a text box on the right.

    Now for the weird part. As I edit this file, the text inside the tables randomly disappears and the only way to get it to show again is to slightly tweak the width of the text box in the table. The tables are NOT too small for the text…this is not an overflow issue. Even weirder, I have had to tweak the same text boxes numerous times, because each time I go into this file to work on it, different tables lose their text, sometimes the same ones as before, sometimes different ones.

    I’ve wracked my brain and cannot for the life of me figure out why this is happening, but it’s causing me hours and hours of extra work that has to be done over and over again.

    Help! Has anyone else encountered this before?

    Thanks for any insight you can provide.

  • May 20, 2015 at 1:10 am #75497
    Colleen Shannon

    Member

    Try selecting all or some of the text, then Window->Type->Character->flyout menu->No Break

    If No Break is checked, uncheck it.

  • May 20, 2015 at 9:16 am #75508
    Patti Moran

    Member

    Hmmm…interesting. I’ve tried it on two of the table text boxes and No Break was NOT checked. So I checked it and the text came back. I wonder if it will stay that way? Half the problem is that the changes I make don’t stay changed, so I’m fixing the same boxes over and over.

    Interesting though…. I’ve never seen that one. Will look into it some more.

    Thank you!!

  • May 20, 2015 at 9:40 am #75509
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    Yes, this is a known screen display problem and happens to me frequently. Very annoying. I find that I can force it to appear again by either switching to a different spread and back again or — here’s my favorite method — press Command-Option-/ (slash) (or ctrl-alt-slash on windows, of course)
    https://creativepro.com/force-text-reflow-when-indesign-forgets-to-flow-the-text.php

  • May 20, 2015 at 9:56 am #75510
    Patti Moran

    Member

    Changing to a different spread didn’t help in my case…one the table cell goes blank it stays that way till I fix it…but then it can go blank again the next time I make changes to the file. That’s the maddening thing.

    I don’t think command-option-/ is working either. I selected one of the table cells and applied that command and nothing happened. I cannot place the cursor inside the cell when it’s blank like that. And there’s no overflow symbol on the text boxes that have gone blank.

    So far the only thing that’s worked (besides tweaking the width of the cell) is Colleen’s suggestion, and I’m not even sure if it will STAY fixed. I have put a green fill in some of the boxes I’ve fixed with the No Break command and will see if they go blank again next time I edit the file.

    Thanks for your suggestions!!

    • May 20, 2015 at 10:40 am #75515
      Dwayne Harris

      Member

      Is hyphenation allowed for the text? I know for most tables I do, the client doesn’t want hyphenation, but sometimes a word is too big to fit and has to be hyphenated. If hyphenation is turned off, the text disappears as ID considers it overflow. If I allow hyphenation then it’s okay.

      My first thought was the same as Colleen’s (i.e., making sure that “no break” wasn’t applied anywhere).

  • May 20, 2015 at 10:38 am #75514
    Patti Moran

    Member

    Well, I’m terribly disappointed to find that the No Break option didn’t fix the problem permanently, no more than did my tweaking the cell widths did. I just started editing the file again, and the boxes to which I’d applied the No Break (the ones on following pages after my edits) have gone blank again.

    Tearing my hair out now.

    • May 20, 2015 at 10:42 am #75516
      Dwayne Harris

      Member

      Do you mean you were applying no break or that you made sure it wasn’t applied? You want to be sure it’s not applied (i.e., checkmarked).

    • May 20, 2015 at 11:01 am #75517
      Patti Moran

      Member

      I turning ON the No Break, actually…when I did that, the text reappeared. But it didn’t STAY there. As soon as I edited a page before that which I did the No Break edit, the cell went blank again. Turning No Break off again, brings the text back, but clearly that’s not going to stick either. So, sadly, “No Break” wasn’t the issue.

  • May 20, 2015 at 12:04 pm #75518
    Patti Moran

    Member

    Okay… I tried turning off hyphenation in the affected cells, and they are STILL going blank at random. So hyphenation isn’t the answer either.

    *sigh* I must just have a buggy file. If I get this job again next year, I may just build it myself from scratch. That will take a LOT of time, but it can’t be worse than tweaking text boxes over and over and over again.

    Still open to ideas if you have any, but I despair of ever finding a solution to this.

    Thank you for your help.

    Patti

  • May 22, 2015 at 5:27 am #75551
    Masood Ahmad

    Participant

    I’m not sure what is going wrong even if you have tried all the possibilities. Just thinking about the Keep options. Might be the “Keep Lines Together” is clicked ON.

  • May 22, 2015 at 7:17 am #75554
    Patti Moran

    Member

    I’ll test and see if that helps. Thanks Masood.

    P

• Author
  Posts