I’ve stumbled upon a bug evident in text originated from MS-Word, which affects the HTML structure when exported from InDesign. Originally I encountered it with Hebrew text in heavily-style-driven paragraphs, however I re-created it in a completely “clean” style environment as well:

(1) Create a new file in MS-Word. Type some text into it (as “Lorem Ipsum”).

(2) Copy the text and Paste into InDesign.

(3) Reset the Paragraph Style; then apply a Character style to the text (it could be a Character style with no attributes).

(4) Paste the same text into Notepad, then Copy it again from Notepad into InDesign as a second paragraph (you could just as well re-type it in InDesign; the idea is to have an identical text created solely in InDesign rather than pasted from Word, to avoid any added hidden additional data which may be there).

(5) Export to HTML.

The paragraph pasted into InDesign from Word – even though it has been reset – seems to cause the HTML export process to re-state a <span> section for the Character Style – even though all of the text should be with the same attributes and the same character style – that is, the </span> of one character style is immediately followed by the next <span> of the same character style.

The next paragraph, containing the same text copied and pasted through a “cleanup mediator” (in the form of Notepad, for example) does not cause the same behaviour.

I could not find any difference in the attributes associated with either paragraph from within InDesign.

This makes the resulting structure of a text originated from Word much more cumbersome; in addition, at least when dealing with RTL text (such as Hebrew) this may cause problems in alignment – especially when used in floating text elements (through css).

InDesign version: 16.0.1 x64

The epub 3.0 reflowable and html exports are dropping characters from the export tags in the html/xhtml files. This just started happening in the last few weeks (not sure exactly when it started), perhaps early Aug 2019. My version of InDesign is upgraded to CC V14.0.3 x64, and it is still happening. I've attached 4 screenshots: 2 show the export tags in Paragraph styles, and the other 2 show the files generated by InDesign (1 in html and 1 in xhtml from an epub export). Characters are dropped from the styles. It doesn't drop a character in all styles, and it's not always the same character. I've exported MANY html/epub files, and the last few weeks is the first time it has ever done this. Please help!

On export to ePub and / or html (on Windows 10 64-bit), single characters are removed from class names. This appears to happen randomly (as shown below), but consistently (the same tags will have the same errors after closing and opening the document, after quitting and restarting InDesign, after restarting the computer, and whether exported as ePub or html).

– span class="Colour" becomes span class="Colo r" (set on character style)
– h4 class="Event-Month" becomes h4 class="E ent-Month" (though h4 class="Event-Date" is OK) (both set on paragraph style)
– span class="Link" becomes span class="Lin" (set on character style)

These same errors are not restricted to one document; they also occur to another document with the same style sheets.

Changing these names revealed that this issue is related to a specific character in the class name, rather than the number of characters, as follows:

– changing to span class="Clr" outputs span class="Clr"
– changing to h4 class="Evnt-Month" outputs h4 class="E nt-Month" (h4 class="Event-Date" remains OK)
– changing to span class="Lnk" outputs span class="Ln"

This means that, for some reason, random characters in specific class names are being removed or replaced with spaces.

Timing: I've updated my Windows 10 Pro to version 20H2, build 19042.630, but I've looked at a backup file created before that update and the issue was still present - therefore it's not related to the recent Windows feature update. The issue was not present last month, when I exported a document with the same settings, using InDesign v15.1.3 x64 - so it's happened after that. Therefore, this issue must be caused by a bug in the 2021 version of InDesign (v16.0 x64). I have confirmed this by exporting the same document as last month in v16, and the same error is present in that exported file.

In the Hyperlinks panel, Email hyperlinks that include a subject that includes an ampersand will change from an Email-type to a URL-type when you click OK. Status will then appear as a red dot in the Hyperlinks panel instead of an envelope. Opening it again from the Hyperlinks panel will show the subject gone and in a URL format.

TO TEST - Highlight text in your document. Open the Hyperlinks Panel. Create a new hyperlink with the [+] button at the bottom of the panel, choose email as the type, type a valid email address, then enter a subject line that include an ampersand (&) . Click OK.

THE FIX - Removing the ampersand from the subject line will keep the issue from occurring.