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Adobe InDesign: Bugs

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  1. Version of Adobe InDesign, InCopy or InDesign Server
  2. Steps to reproduce the issues
  3. Expected result
  4. Actual result
  5. Test file, screenshot, video or GIF capturing the issue (optional)
If you are facing a crash in InDesign, please submit the crash report as well. How to Submit Crash Report
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1337 results found

  1. Bizarre issue: footnote appearing in middle of text frame

    Never seen this one before! Changing some text to a style that uses split columns caused one of the footnotes in the text frame to jump to ABOVE the styled text. I can't even understand how this is possible given the logic of the software. See screenshot. I would like my footnotes to stay at the foot of the frame, please.

    2 votes

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  2. Issue with images not showing when searching in InDesign

    High Sierra InDesign 13.1 NAS File Server

    When trying to search my artwork folder (called Color Art) for items containign the word "steak" on my NAS to place an image in InDesign it comes up as if it was empty. If I then leave InDesign and do a search the "steak" images appear. Not having this search function has been crippling to my dept. eating up all sorts of time.

    2 votes

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  3. [ID-4263586] Adobe InDesign 2025 text justify buttons issue

    In the latest update of InDesign 2025 (as of writing this), there is a problem with the text justification buttons in the toolbar.

    Previously, you could click these buttons and then just keep typing into your currently active text frame, which is what one would expect from previous versions of InDesign.

    With the latest update, keyboard focus instead shifts over to these buttons, taking focus away from the text frame and your current text cursor position.
    This is completely useless, and makes it more difficult than it should be to, say, change the justification at a certain line of text…

    2 votes

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  4. [ID-4258070]Disappearing Punctuation Marks in Hebrew RTL Justified Text in Exported PDF

    Severity Level: Critical
    Impact: Severe disruption to Hebrew text layout workflow and document integrity

    Bug Description

    Punctuation marks are randomly disappearing in justified Hebrew text blocks (RTL direction), specifically at:
    - Paragraph endings
    - Forced line breaks
    - Last lines of justified paragraphs

    Technical Context

    • Text Direction: Right-to-Left (RTL)
    • Language: Hebrew
    • Text Alignment: Justified

    Affected Punctuation Marks

    • Periods (.)
    • Semicolons (;)
    • Commas (,)
    • Colons (:)

    Specific Behavior in RTL Context

    1. When Hebrew text is set to justified alignment, punctuation marks vanish:
      • At the end of paragraphs
      • Before forced line breaks
    2. Exception: Punctuation marks remain visible if the last line is…
    406 votes

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    The fix of the issue is now available in the latest InDesign 2025(v20.3.1.073). We recommend you upgrade to the latest version for the fix.

    If you are unable to see the update, go to the Creative Cloud application click on the context menu on the top right, and click on Check for App Updates.

    Adobe InDesign Team

  5. Adobe 2020 Crashes with copy & paste

    Whenever I try to copy/paste small elements from adobe illustrator onto Adobe InDesign, indesign will automatically quit. If I try to recover the file after it has crashed, it crashes again...

    What is happening here? This is an ongoing issue since the update.

    13 votes

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  6. Multiple text line links tab out of order

    Not sure if InDesign or Acrobat issue: Using 13.1. InDesign - Recently noticed that if I have text that flows to 2 lines and that has a hyperlink behind it, in Acrobat, the tags show the link as having two Link-OBJR, but they are the reverse of reading order. So if you tab the page, you go from 2nd line of text to first. So,

    'Go to
    the store'

    tabs as if it is 'the store' 'go to'. The underlying link is fine--no issue there--it's the tab order and tag order (tag order perhaps then impacting screen readers/accessibility???).

    This…

    13 votes

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    7 comments  ·  PDF Export  ·  Admin →
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  7. PDF fails to export InDesign 14.0.1 - Still an issue

    So many bugs in InDesign!!!

    1) Export to PDF (any settings) works once after starting InDesign. Then fails on any attempt to re-export. Which ever preset I use - error. Nothing special about the file - nothing!

    2) Also, and I know it's not about PDF, Keyboard shortcut to start a New Document does not work on startup. I have to click on file menu and open the sub menu item New – then the shortcut works :| No error – nothing! It just does not respond to shortcuts.

    BTW: Posting this by clicking "Post idea" does not mean that…

    2 votes

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    0 comments  ·  PDF Export  ·  Admin →
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  8. Separation Preview Bug

    Separation preview will scrambled when you jump to next page and turn any colour separation off, the text and image from previous page will show on the current display page.

    This issue has beed existed since version 2017 to 2020. I saw some users are facing same issue from previous version and not been fix all these years.

    7 votes

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  9. [ID-4216162]A splitted footnote with three lines violates keep options and makes a widow instead of an orphan

    1. Version of Adobe InDesign
      This issue appears in every InDesign versions since footnotes are supported.
      Bug reports / feature requests (from CS3 up to CS6) have been ignored in the past.

    2. Steps to reproduce the issues
      given:
      a) a footnote with three text lines
      b) splitting footnotes allowed in the footnote options
      c) keep options: at start/end of Paragraph 2/2 (2 lines at start, 2 lines at end)

    Play with the textframes hight so that the footnote is forced to be splitted. It will only split 2/1, not 1/2.

    1. Actual result
      The footnots splits with 2 lines in the…

    22 votes

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    Under Review  ·  amaarora responded

    Thanks for reporting the issue. We are reviewing it

    -InDesign Team

  10. RTL Text Bugs Despite "Fixed" Notification

    InDesign 20.3.1.073

    Dear Adobe InDesign Development Team,
    We appreciate your efforts in addressing the RTL text issues introduced with the HarfBuzz engine in InDesign 19 (2024) and the improvements made through version 20.3.1.073.
    However, we must bring to your urgent attention that, contrary to your recent "Fixed" notification, several critical bugs remain unresolved, several critical bugs remain unresolved, impacting right-to-left (RTL) workflows (Hebrew & Arabic).

    Critical Bug:

    • #1: Disappearing Punctuation/Text in PDF Export with Drop Cap and Line Break When a drop cap is applied )in justified RTL text( followed by punctuation and a line break, the punctuation marks…
    129 votes

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  11. Icon Panels do not expand correctly when Application Frame is OFF.

    Recurring issue from one InDesign upgrade to the next! Found 2- and 6-year old reports of the same bug. In-between updates fix it but reoccurs with every new upgrade...

    ISSUE
    When Application Frame is disabled, panels that are on the right side of the screen don't expand towards the left as they normally would but to the right.
    The bigger the UI scaling size, the more to the right of the screen the panel expansion moves, soon disappearing altogether. Only smallest sizing allows to display properly.
    Attaching screenshot for reference.
    No problem when Application Frame is enabled.

    TECHNICAL INFO:
    macOS…

    14 votes

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  12. Font display issue with certain fonts in images from clipboard (18.1 x64)

    We use a charting service called Macrobond, and copy images from that software to insert in InDesign. The following buggy behavior is observed:

    When using certain fonts in the chart, the pasted image in InDesign displays those fonts in miniscule sizes. That does not happen with other fonts fonts.

    I suspect the issue stems from different ways in which InDesign handles the various fonts based on whether they are included or third-party (or perhaps depending if they are installed locally on the PC or is fetched from the Adobe library).

    In this example the first image shows a problematic chart…

    1 vote

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  13. Indesign 2024 Unable to Recognize Variable Fonts from Documents Created with Previous Version

    InDesign 2024 (v19.0) fails to recognize variable fonts from documents created in previous version. Specifically, Helvetica Now Variable weights and widths are reported as missing. Running MacOS Sonoma (but the same system opens the file without issue when using InDesign 2023… can’t be an OS issue.)

    6 votes

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    4 comments  ·  Others  ·  Admin →
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  14. Accessible PDF Exported from ID contains SPANS in Reading Order panel

    InDesign Version: 13.1

    To reproduce issue, create an InDesign document with some styles, map styles to tags and export to PDF with tags (accessible pdf).

    Expected result is that in the Reading Order panel (and Content pane), each paragraph is wrapped in an appropriate container.

    The actual result is that each line of text within a paragraph is wrapped in a span container.

    Although this doesn't seem to directly affect the accessibility of the file, it makes additional remediation difficult because of the many containers found in the PDF file.

    26 votes

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    4 comments  ·  PDF Export  ·  Admin →
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    Hello All,
    We acknowledge that the issue is slowing you down and we regret the same.
    Our investigation suggests that the issue lies in the latest update of Acrobat and there is little that can be done at our end to resolve the issue.
    The problem has been communicated to the relevant team.
    In the meanwhile we are closing this thread for InDesign.

    Regards,
    InDesign Team

  15. Disappearing footnotes on export

    Since updating to the latest major release of InDesign (14), we have been experiencing issues in one of our templates where footnotes have been disappearing from chapters (documents) in a Book when exporting the Book as a PDF.

    This was not an issue in previous versions of InDesign and the template has not changed.

    Is this perhaps a bug?

    12 votes

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    5 comments  ·  PDF Export  ·  Admin →
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  16. PDF Hyphenation Bug when line has cross-reference, hyphenated word, and option is to create Tagged PDF

    When exporting an InDesign document to PDF, the hyphenated word is displayed incorrectly in the output PDF.

    It only happens with a line that has cross-reference object, hyphenated word, and option is to create Tagged PDF.

    InDesign 2019 (14.0.1) (MAC/PC) . Also tried it with previous versions and it has the same issue.

    14 votes

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    9 comments  ·  PDF Export  ·  Admin →
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  17. Objects drawn with Pen tool (including paths for text) disappear when placed over Photoshop file—text wrap is NOT the issue.

    As a children's book designer, I often type on paths, and almost always place text over images. Everything was fine until InDesign's February 2023 update. Now, anything I draw with a pen tool on my text layer—shapes, or paths for type—are invisible, unless I turn off the image layer below it. Note that text wrap for the image is turned off. Text wrap is not the issue!

    Attached are side-by-side screenshots showing my attempts to type on a path. The text disappears when the image layer is turned on. As an experiment, I also drew a random shape with…

    1 vote

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  18. Load DTD throws error in InDesign 2022 (17.0)

    When using the structure menu to load a DTD , the latest version of InDesign sometimes throws an error with a single period as the message. I'm using the same DTD I've used successfully in previous versions of InDesign.

    Error text:
    .
    Line 941, Column: 18

    In the context of this DTD, line 941 column 18 points to the % sign used to refer to an earlier parameter entity. This has never been a problem for InDesign before:

    <!ELEMENT sam (%paragraph_styles; | table | footnote | endnote)+ >

    Even using the same DTD in the same file, this issue doesn't…

    16 votes

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    3 comments  ·  Others  ·  Admin →
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  19. Data merge not working for absolute paths on macOS

    With the latest update of 19.4, image paths no longer work for merge documents. I installed the latest update, which went back to 19.3, and have had no issues; therefore, I have isolated the issue with the update. I currently usean Excell file with an image field and the path to the image associated with each record. I have not changed anything in the file but with the new update I get the error message indicating the file is missing.

    18 votes

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    The fix of the issue is now available in the latest InDesign 2024(v19.5.0.084). We recommend you upgrade to the latest version for the fix.

    Kindly update the data source file with the POSIX style path in Macintosh to work with data merge functionality smoothly. Please refer to the helpx https://helpx.adobe.com/in/indesign/using/data-merge.html to know more about the difference between HFS and Posix style paths.

    You can get the actual POSIX path of a file by right-click it in the Finder while holding Option (or right-click, then press Option) > Copy as pathname menu. This can help you explore the correct POSIX paths to ensure you're using them correctly.

    Note: Relative path as such /<foldername>/<filename> is no longer supported after the fix, as it considers the starting “/” as an absolute path. Instead, the recommendation is to omit the starting “/” and use <foldername>/<filename> instead or any of the other existing ways to access the…

  20. EPUB – Endnote backlink issues for INDB files

    When exporting EPUB 3.0 (and 2.01) from an InDesign(2022, version 17.4) book file, endnotes only link in the first chapter where they are found. Subsequent chapters reveal <a> tags with empty href attributes.
    Backlinks are required by virtually all ebook publishers. For academic books, endnotes are essential and the request for EPUB formats is only increasing.

    So far Adobe Car's response: "Currently, we do not have a workaround for this issue other than creating a single document instead of book or manually modifying backlink in the exported EPUB file." This isn't acceptable or even always possible.

    5 votes

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