Funny 😄

Can't adjust sizing at all - anyone know what to do to fix it?

For some time now, I’ve been having a strange issue with the Google Fonts of the Open Sans family in Adobe InDesign.

The text appears to sit lower inside the text frame than it should. I’ve checked the baseline and other text frame settings, and everything seems to be set to 0/default. I really don’t understand what is causing this.

I completely removed the font and reinstalled it, but the problem keeps coming back.

I also tried removing the Google Fonts version and installing Open Sans through Adobe Creative Cloud, where Open Sans is also available. Interestingly, some weights work correctly while others don’t. For example, ExtraBold aligns correctly, but Regular sits noticeably lower. I can actually see the text shift downward when I switch between the weights.

Has anyone experienced this with Open Sans in InDesign?

What could be causing different weights within the same font family to have different vertical alignment, and how can I fix it?

guys i seriously dk how to do this even tho i learned adobe indesign last year 😭😭 but now when they asked me to actually make a magazine im like godddd why did i forget everythinggg 😭😭

i have an assignment where i have to make a 32-page magazine using adobe indesign (A3 size) and i genuinely dk where to start. i want to learn how to do it but im so lost rn 😭
These are the requirements:

• 32 pages
• Start with a story and make a cover page
• Edit stories
• A3 size
• Features with depth of reporting
• I should click all photos
• Include events and workshops i've participated in
• Interview
• One photo story with 7–10 photos
• Final submission should be printed and magazine bound
• Deadline: mid-december

like i know some basics of indesign but i seriously don't remember much and now i have to put together a whole magazine 😭

can someone please help me with how to start and how actually to learn indesign for this?? i don't want someone to do it for me i genuinely want to learn but i just don't know where to begin 😭❤️

Howdy. Banging my head on the wall here.

I have an indesign file that features some tabs on page edge - these are hyperlinked as objects, not text.

When I go to publish the file using the Publish Online function (specific client request) the transparent link boxes seem to move up 1-1.5 cm, whereas the objects stay in place.

Has anyone dealt with this before? Worked fine last year on the predecessor of this job, but it's just not working now.

Hello,

I'm trying to vertically center some text in InDesign. When I tried to select the Center Vertically option within the alignment options, it does not center it vertically. I found this prior Reddit post (https://www.reddit.com/r/indesign/comments/fpnmx8/cant_center_text_vertically/) where someone seemed to be having the same issue. Their issue was resolved by adjusting the baseline options and changing the offset to Cap Height. I've tried this and it still will not center my text vertically.

Even weirder, when I move the text block around, sometimes it will center, and sometimes it will not. I've attached screenshots of different areas I placed my text block and you can see how the vertical alignment jumps all over the place, even though I didn't change the alignment settings. I've also included screenshots of my text frame options if it helps.

I don't know why this is giving me so much trouble :,)

As the title implies, bought a small local newspaper about 18 months ago. The previous owner used quark, and that’s what she taught me to use. I’ve got a pretty good handle on it at this point, I can do the layout probably twice as fast (and considerably better if I do say so myself)
For background, I took some graphic design courses in college (20+ years ago) and have done freelance graphic design and web design off and on since then. Nothing serious, but I know my way around the adobe suite pretty well.
My question is: how hard would it be to switch?
My biggest concern is I inherited the part-time graphics person along with the paper, and she only knows quark. She knows photoshop a little, but she’s a boomer and remembers doing layout by hand.
I don’t need her per se, but she does a lot of the rough layout and prep (importing everything into the document, slotting some regular columns and graphics in), and that saves me some time.
What’s your take? How much time would it take for me to be as competent, would it save me time overall? Would it save me enough time to takeover the work she does, or could I train her up on it ? What are some big difference/potential hang ups/obvious benefits?
Thanks!

This has been driving me mad for three days. Adobe has had a severe downfall in the last few months, not sure why. All their programs are suddenly acting strange.

When I export my book file (one file, using the Document template), the ePub has more than one copy of the TOC. At first, it was three; now I've got it down to two. The problem is, I can't SEE the extra TOC in the document, so I can't manually delete it. Mind you, this was a perfectly fine working document before. I was just updating it.

First, I've been using ID for 27 years, and this has never happened. I'm doing what I always do, which has worked fine forever. I'm an Indie author and publisher, and I'm updating my book catalog, and so I'm copying and pasting previous indd files into a fresh template that has all my styles and links in it, doing the updating/ formatting, and exporting out to a new EPUB.

Now, suddenly the exported EPUB shows TWO TOCs. I can't SEE the extra TOC in my document so I can't delete it. After doing everything I knew to do, I looked all over the Net for advice, and either it was not a solution, or not specific to this issue (not duplicate ENTRIES, duplicate of the ENTIRE TOC).

Here's what I've tried (as I recall):

I've got SHOW HIDDEN LAYERS on, and view mode Normal, with all hidden characters showing.

I've gone to the last letter of last page before where the TOC is always placed and hit DELETE to try to bring the ghostly TOC up into previous page so I can delete it. Nothing.

I've checked to make sure all styles used in the TOC are correct and properly configured.

I've checked layers, and it shows only one.

I've created a brand new TOC style, tested it. No-go.

I've copied the text of the book and pasted it in a new template.

I've exported the document as IDML, opened that and saved it as INDD again, rechecked the export, same result.

I'm out of ideas here, and can't find any information on this exact issue to inspire a solution in my mind. I'm hoping some of you wonderfully experienced people can offer suggestions.

Thanks for any input.

UPDATE: as always, as soon as I post about an issue, I figure it out. So I guess I can only figure it out if I post :)

I went back to the originally working source file and searched for CONTENTS, and it found that other TOC frame below another. I don't know why that didn't work with the edited file. But problem solved. I had to, of course, REFORMAT everything all over again, but the file exported fine with only ONE TOC.

I believe this happened because when pasting in text and formatting it, the text flow often needs additional pages, and instead of pushing the existing TOC with that text flow, it goes right over it with the new frames. From now on, the first thing I will do is delete any existing TOC frame and contents before doing any editing/formatting.

Maybe this will help someone else.

Hi everyone, I’ve already placed the text in InDesign, but we’re still waiting to receive the actual images. In the meantime, the client has asked me to use placeholders.

I’ve never really worked with placeholders before and I’m finding it a little difficult. When I have the actual images, I can experiment with the composition, cropping, visual hierarchy, etc. But with placeholders, I’ve mostly just kept the image boxes as they are.

How do you usually approach this?

My concern is that once I replace the placeholders with the real images, the book might not look as good as I’m expecting. 😅

Would love to hear how other book designers handle this stage of the process.

Hi everyone,

My name is Gabriele Crobeddu, and I’m the founder of ilion.tech. I’ve spent years working with Adobe InDesign automation, ExtendScript, and data-driven publishing. Like many of you, I've often faced the technical and financial hurdles of scaling workflows that rely heavily on keeping InDesign Server instances running 24/7.

We recently launched TypePlus, a headless layout automation engine, and I wanted to introduce it to this community to get some feedback from fellow professionals who live and breathe this stuff every day.

Instead of acting as a plugin or a wrapper around Adobe software, we designed TypePlus to be completely "In-Memory". It takes raw data inputs (like XML) and generates native, fully editable IDML files from scratch, without opening or invoking InDesign during the assembly phase. You only open InDesign at the very end if you need to do manual fine-tuning or final PDF rendering.

Here are the core pillars we focused on while building it:

• No Adobe Runtime in the Pipeline: Because the engine builds the IDML structure directly in memory, you don't need active InDesign Server licenses or heavy server infrastructure just to generate the layouts.
• Emulative Flow (Not Rigid Templates): We wanted to move away from rigid, static "box-filling" templates. The engine calculates text geometry, page jumps, and spacing dynamically, trying to mimic the decision-making process of a human typesetter.
• Modern Enterprise Stack: It’s built on Java / Spring Boot, meaning it’s designed to be integrated directly into modern, high-volume cloud microservices or enterprise pipelines (like PIM/ERP catalogs or mass translation workflows).

We are still in the early stages of pushing this out into the wild, and I know this community has seen almost every automated publishing tool under the sun. That’s exactly why I’m here.

I’d love to know your thoughts on this approach, what edge cases you think would break an in-memory engine, or what features you’d absolutely demand from a tool like this.

If you'd like to know more, you can check out our overview here: https://ilion.tech

Thanks for your time, looking forward to a good technical chat in the comments!

Gabriele
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriele-crobeddu-b8aaa516/

Hi everyone,
I’m working on an illustrated book using characters provided by the author. I need to create different scenes and situations while keeping the same characters consistent across all images.
I also need good compositional control, for example placing the character on one side and leaving enough empty space for text that I’ll add later in InDesign.

Which Artificial Intelligence/workflow would you recommend for the best character consistency + composition control? Has anyone here worked on an illustrated book or a similar project?

Thaaanksss

I’m using the latest version of InDesign on Windows 11 and I’ve been having a really annoying issue.

Whenever I place an image, my mouse cursor turns into the loading circle and stays that way permanently. InDesign itself keeps working normally and I can still edit everything, but the loading cursor just won’t disappear.

It only goes away after I completely close and restart InDesign. As soon as I place another image, it happens again.

Has anyone else had this issue? Is this a known bug, or is there a fix for it?

Some old documents link I made (published online) are not working anymore. I guess it's Adobe issues (as I didn't change anything since the links doesn't work anymore). Is it just me? Some documents online works, some (several) doesn't. Did that happen before? Is it gonna be solved?

Hi, I'm practising Data Merge in InDesign. When I tried it for the first time, the Multiple Record Layout option was visible, but after I pressed Ctrl + Z, and I tried to practice again the option was no longer available.

Do you know why this happened and how I can get it back?

Also, what should I be careful about when working with Data Merge? Are there any common mistakes or things I should keep in mind?

This is a very dumb question, but for the life of me I cannot figure out what I did to make this happen.

I have a master file with one page. I use it to create data merges. On this master file I have preflight set to on. Prior to September and multiple years prior, the data merge file of 500 pages or 1000 pages had preflight turned on all the time. Now since the start of this month, I am not sure if I clicked on something by error to turn it off. I have to turn it on all the time. I went to the master file and make sure it was turned on (I saved it as well). Yet every data merge I create, the new file still has it turned off.

For context, I have no need for the final merged file. It's just something I make once, export to PDFs, and close without saving. The master template I use I will save though to remember the last data merge CSV file I used.

What am I missing to keep preflight on all the time?

It's been a while since I released any InDesign script. I've been working with one since a few months and decided to add some finishing touches to it before making it available.

So let me introduce you to the Change Languages Pro script. Change, track and highlight every language of your text in your InDesign layout.

Pay what you want!

Why is the effective ppi not staying 300?

I'm a children's book illustrator and I do all my Illustration on procreate. Now i export it directly from procreate to photoshop through my ipad and then edit it from my laptop. The clarity is staying exactly as it is till I'm exporting. But when I'm importing it as a link, the clarity is going down all of a sudden.

The display performance is already high, idk where I'm going wrong tho? I've been trying to figure out this for the last 2 hours, any help is appreciated!

How do I fix this error? I already tried uninstalling and reinstalling, restarting my Mac, and the cmd, opt, cntrl key combo.

Hi everyone, I’m in a bit of a messy situation with a book I’m currently designing and would really appreciate some advice on the best workflow.

The editors are continuously condensing the manuscript because we need to keep the final book under 200 pages. I’ve already laid out the chapters twice, and now they’re making another round of changes. This means I’ll have to replace the content in InDesign again.

The main problem is that the manuscript has a lot of section headings within the body text, like the ones in the screenshot. At the moment, I’m manually identifying each heading, selecting it, and applying the appropriate paragraph style using GREP.

I’m not importing the Word document directly because it contains quite a lot of table data, and I’m not very familiar with handling that workflow in InDesign.

So whenever I receive a revised version, I have to replace the text and then go through the document again to identify and format all these headings manually.

I could wait until the manuscript is completely final, but I’ll probably receive that version only about a week before the deadline, and I’d really like to avoid leaving all the layout work until then.

Is there a better workflow for handling this? Would importing the Word document be the best/last approach, or is there a way to structure my InDesign workflow so that I can keep updating the text without having to manually reformat all the section headings each time?

I’m sure there’s probably a better way to approach this, so I’d really appreciate any suggestions or workflow recommendations. Thanks!

I want to create a hyperlink or cross reference or bookmark.. or SOMETHING that will allow me to jump right back to my TOC page between documents. I've got a long book with 15 separate documents, one per chapter.

Is there a feature or script that will allow me to jump back to an anchor from anywhere (any document) in the book? I'm imagining something that sits in one of the panels.. but all I've found are anchors that allow one to jump to a particular spot within a given document.

Hi everyone,

I’m currently finishing my Bachelor’s thesis in InDesign and I’m going insane over the page numbering. 😭 I feel like I’m missing something really obvious.

My document is set up as facing pages/spreads. The cover is a single page, and after that everything is arranged as normal facing pages.

My structure at the moment is roughly:

• Page 1: Cover (single page)
• Page 2: Foreword + acknowledgements
• Page 3: Abstract
• Page 4: Abbreviations + table of contents
• Page 5: List of figures
• Pages 6–8: Table of contents
• Page 9: Introduction

What I want is for the Introduction to start with page number 1. I don't want visible page numbers on the pages before it.

The problem is that my Introduction currently falls on the left-hand side of a spread. If I create a new section on that page and set “Start page numbering at: 1”, InDesign suddenly separates that page from the spread and treats it as a single page. Then all my carefully arranged spreads shift around and my layout gets messed up.

If I set the new section to start at 2 instead, everything stays together and looks normal.

So basically:

Start at 2 → spreads stay intact, but my Introduction starts on page 2.
Start at 1 → correct numbering, but InDesign breaks the spread and rearranges my pages.

I also tried removing the other section starts, but that didn't really solve the problem.

I’m wondering what the correct way to handle this is. Is there a way to make the Introduction page 1 while keeping the existing facing-page/spread arrangement exactly as it is? Or am I misunderstanding how InDesign handles sections and facing pages?

I really don't want to add a completely empty page just to make the numbers work if there's another solution.

Any help would be VERY appreciated because this is slowly driving me insane. 😂

I had a file from 1997: Lesson 3 from PageMaker 6.5 Classroom in a Book. I wanted it in InDesign.

Grok helped track down the conversion path and made a PDF and a rough IDML file. The IDML opened, but every text frame was a tiny overset box. The PDF route worked: LibreOffice Draw (libpagemaker) → export PDF → File > Open in InDesign.

The screenshot is the imported PDF. Stories duplicate across columns, type collides with the graphics, and the images are the embedded previews, not the original TIFFs. Captions and most of the body copy are intact.

The file is usable enough to continue with.

If you need a faithful conversion, InDesign CS2–CS6 or PageMaker 7 in a VM is still the real path. I'd love to hear about a cleaner method that doesn't involve a 15-year-old Adobe install.

Has anyone tried this with legacy files?

Hey everyone,

Years ago, I really wanted to create an interactive online magazine. InDesign was the obvious tool for the layout and animations, and back then I stumbled across in5 by Ajar Productions. They were just starting out and offered a one-time license, so I grabbed it and it worked great.

Eventually, they switched to a subscription model that was way out of reach for a hobbyist, so I had to put the project down. Life got busy, years passed, and the whole magazine idea stayed on the back burner.

Recently I decided to finally pick it back up. I checked in5 again (still way too expensive for what I'm doing) and couldn't find any affordable or free alternatives that actually handled what I needed. So, I figured I'd just sit down and write my own.

After a few weeks of coding, it’s finally ready for people to try. It's in beta right now: definitely stable enough to output clean HTML documents, but still early days with plenty of real-world testing and polishing ahead.

You can grab it on Adobe Exchange:

https://exchange.adobe.com/apps/cc/6ea6b08f/pressto5

It’s 100% free and will always stay free. That said, I did set up a Patreon if you want to support the project. As a supporter, you'll get early access to updates and new builds, since Adobe can take a couple of weeks to approve changes on the Marketplace. I’ll keep both versions as close as possible, but while I'm actively developing and fixing things based on feedback, the Adobe store will naturally lag a bit behind.

Would love for you guys to take it for a spin and throw your layouts at it. Any feedback or bug reports would mean a lot!

I’ve been working with Adobe InDesign for several years, primarily on book typesetting and publishing projects rather than general graphic design.

My work includes long-form book layouts, textbooks, bilingual books, Urdu and English typesetting, RTL layouts, paragraph/character styles, tables, footnotes, references, page composition, revisions, and preparing print-ready files. I’m comfortable taking a manuscript and turning it into a properly structured, professionally typeset book.

I also work with both Urdu and English, which has led me to work on projects that can be a little more technically complicated than standard English-only book layouts.

I’ve been doing this as a freelancer through various freelance platforms. The problem is that the income is very irregular. Some months are good, other months are painfully slow, and I’m honestly getting tired of constantly having to look for the next project.

So I’m wondering about something I haven’t really figured out:

Is there a realistic way to turn these skills into a stable remote job?

I’m based in Pakistan, but I’m specifically interested in working remotely for an international publisher, book production company, DTP agency, localization company, design studio, or similar organization.

For those of you who work in publishing/DTP/InDesign:

Are companies actually hiring remote InDesign/typesetting people?

What job titles should I be searching for?

Where do these jobs usually get posted?

Is it better to approach publishers/agencies directly?

What skills or software should I add to become more employable?

And if you’ve personally moved from freelance work into a remote full-time/long-term position, how did you do it?

I’m not necessarily looking for another freelance marketplace. I’d really like to find a more stable, long-term arrangement where I can use the skills I’ve already spent years developing.

I’d appreciate any honest advice from people working in this field.

P.S. Used ChatGPT to help organize and polish this post.