Adobe Community: Please stop "Find Font" from deleting text when I select "change all."

Currently Being Moderated

1. Peter Spier,

Sep 17, 2012 6:49 AM in reply to Ozzie736

Report

I've moved your thread from feature requests to the main discussion forum so it can get some better attention.

What do you mean the text disappears -- holes in the text where things used to be, chunks of text that are deleted from the document?

A before and after screen shot would help a lot.

|

Mark as:

Currently Being Moderated

2. Ozzie736,

Sep 17, 2012 7:36 AM in reply to Peter Spier

Report

Thank you for responding. I don't have screen shots--will have to get the behavior to repeat this morning. Most typically, when I try to change from Font 1 italic to Font 2 italic, every italicized word is deleted (I'm pretty sure it's just deleted and not replaced with a space, but I'll have to check when it happens again). So if my sentence was

"John sailed aboard USS Constitution, then aboard the Lynx."

I would end up with something like

"John sailed aboard USS , then aboard the ."

A couple of times I've selected the "change all" button and I end up with my chapter heading (set in the body of my text--I know there are better/neater/cleaner ways to do a lot of this, but I'm learning, and with the time crunch I've been working with what I have) and maybe 6-10 lines of text, all mashed up at the top, i.e. none of the font/leading etc. attributes that I started with.

eta: Okay, I tried regular text -> regular text and was left with just the italicized stuff.

Also, in case this is relevant, I am changing from a TrueType font (Times) to an Adobe font (Caslon Pro).

Message was edited by: Ozzie736 to add screenshots

|

Mark as:

Currently Being Moderated

3. Peter Spier,

Sep 17, 2012 7:46 AM in reply to Ozzie736

Report

OK, I've never seen anything like that before.

Go to Edit > Edit In Story Editor... and see if the text is really gone or marked as conditional or something.

|

Mark as:

Currently Being Moderated

4. Ozzie736,

Sep 18, 2012 7:27 AM in reply to Peter Spier

Report

This morning I started with a new chapter, and sure enough, it deleted all of my italic text instead of changing it. I tried opening the Story Editor, and all of the text that had been in italics was simply gone--it read as if I had gone through and deleted all of that text.

|

Mark as:

Currently Being Moderated

5. Bob Levine,

Sep 18, 2012 7:35 AM in reply to Ozzie736

Report

You were ask by Peter to look in the story editor. Did you?

Bob

|

Mark as:

Currently Being Moderated

6. Peter Spier,

Sep 18, 2012 7:36 AM in reply to Ozzie736

Report

OK, this is far from normal behavior, whcih means there's somethign wrong in your installation, your prefs, or with a third party plugin.

Let's try the easy stuff, first, and trash your prefs. See Replace Your Preferences

Do you have a font manager? If so, try removing the Auto-activation plugin from ID. Do you have any other third-party plugins?

If that doesn't fix it, create a new user and try that for a while. There might be more corruption in your original user than a simple prefs change will fix and that would be an easy way to find out. If it behaves badly in a new user, it's time to uninstall, run the clean tool (CS Cleaner Tool for installation problems | CCM, CS6, CS5.5, CS5, CS4, CS3) reboot and reinstall.

|

Mark as:

Currently Being Moderated

7. Peter Spier,

Sep 18, 2012 7:37 AM in reply to Bob Levine

Report

> "I tried opening the Story Editor, and all of the text that had been in italics was simply gone--it read as if I had gone through and deleted all of that text."

seems like it to me...

|

Mark as:

Currently Being Moderated

8. Bob Levine,

Sep 18, 2012 7:54 AM in reply to Peter Spier

Report

Yikes…maybe I need three cups of coffee instead of two. <g

|

Mark as:

Currently Being Moderated

9. Peter Spier,

Sep 18, 2012 7:59 AM in reply to Bob Levine

Report

It's going around this morning. I've got miss-the-obviousitis too.

|

Mark as:

Currently Being Moderated

10. Ozzie736,

Sep 18, 2012 10:25 AM in reply to Peter Spier

Report

Thank you both for the helpful suggestions!

I have trashed the preferences already, to no avail.

I tried creating a new user account for one chapter and that seemed to work for one chapter, but it drove me a little crazy, not having the rest of my "stuff" handy. Then I tried a new chapter with the old user and it worked; it just takes me multiple tries for some chapters. So as long as I can limp along, I will try to do so until I meet this deadline, and then I can try the clean install when things aren't so hectic.

|

Mark as:

Currently Being Moderated

11. Peter Spier,

Sep 18, 2012 1:56 PM in reply to Ozzie736

Report

Ozzie736 wrote:

I have trashed the preferences already, to no avail.

When people say that I always have to ask "how"? I'm not trying to be insulting when I ask, but it's very important that you do it correctly. ID isn't like most other programs when it comes to replacing the prefs, which is why we send you to that link so you can see a couple of methods that work.

If that alone is not enough, there's a list of addtional things to delete for Mac users at Adobe Forums: InDesign crashes at startup

Also, if the problem is restricte to one or two files, it may actually be file corruption, not the program or your prefs. You can try cleaning the files: Remove minor corruption by exporting , but I've not had a lot of luck doing it with .idml. I'm finding exporting the text in the fiel to InDesign Tagged Text, then palcing that into a new file is generally effective, though, in those cases where the problem is text related and isolated.

|

Mark as:

Currently Being Moderated

12. DMC2492,

Sep 19, 2012 7:10 PM in reply to Ozzie736

Report

I use CS5 and I've had the problem to with my Windows 7 computer. I haven't figured out how to fix it, but I just don't bother trying to fix the font anymore and just highlight all the text and change it manually.

|

Mark as:

Currently Being Moderated

13. Mead324,

Sep 19, 2012 7:25 PM in reply to Ozzie736

Report

Since you've found this doesn't happen every time, is it possible that sometimes you have a "space" character in the "change" box and other times you don't? It would then appear at first glance as though your text is disappearing. Next time you find this has happened, try turning on the hidden characters. (Type Menu -> Show Hidden Characters) If you see extra spaces where your text is missing, perhaps this is the culprit. To avoid the problem, highlight the "change" box and hit delete before completing the "find/change."

|

Mark as:

Currently Being Moderated

14. Peter Spier,

Sep 20, 2012 4:29 AM in reply to Mead324

Report

Find Font doesn't use Find/Change, at least not in the sense that it would be substituting characters. Totally different dialog and operation.

|

Mark as:

Currently Being Moderated

15. Mead324,

Sep 20, 2012 10:56 AM in reply to Peter Spier

Report

Oh, gosh, of course. Sorry...sent my brain down the wrong track!

|

Mark as:

Currently Being Moderated

16. Peter Spier,

Sep 20, 2012 3:29 PM in reply to Mead324

Report

It's been going around this week, and I think it started with me....

|

Mark as:

Currently Being Moderated

17. mckayk_777,

Sep 23, 2012 8:45 PM in reply to Peter Spier

Report

I have CS4 here and I too have had this happen to me on usually but not always old files say PM65 opened in Indesign and replace the old type one font for a newer opentype font.

|

Mark as:

Currently Being Moderated

18. kevermillion,

Oct 4, 2012 4:17 AM in reply to Ozzie736

Report

Having the same problem here in CS5.5. There are 3 of us in this office and we are all experiencing it on our systems; so it's unlikely to be individual installations of CS.

It happens at the find/change dialog box stage. The text imports OK from Word (in Calibri or whatever) and can be seen in the InDesign doc. So the issue is not at the importing stage. When you open the find/change dialog to change the fonts from the ones word was using to the ones you want to use, the italics or bold italics can vanish from the imported text as you convert from the imported font to the selected desired font.

It doesn't matter if the fonts are OT or TT. It happens with 'reliable' faces such as Myriad pro as well as with more obscure ones.

I thought it might be a CS5.5 bug but I note that it's happening in CS6 too which is worrying. Its a really dangerous bug.

|

Mark as:

Currently Being Moderated

19. Peter Spier,

Oct 4, 2012 4:28 AM in reply to kevermillion

Report

kevermillion wrote:

Having the same problem here in CS5.5. There are 3 of us in this office and we are all experiencing it on our systems; so it's unlikely to be individual installations of CS.

While that may be true, it's also possible you all have the same plugin that causes this. How many of you are using a font manager, and which one?

This really soounds like a conflict, not a bug, but anything is possible. If it is a bug, it gets triggered by something uncommon.

Just another random thought, have you opened the Word file before importing, accepted all changes, then done a Save AS to rewrite the file? Word files have a tendency to be flakey.

|

Mark as:

Currently Being Moderated

20. kevermillion,

Oct 4, 2012 4:43 AM in reply to Peter Spier

Report

Thanks Peter

We thought it might be FontExplorer alright, so one of my colleagues removed his FontExplorer InDesign plugin; but it's still happening for him.

I'll try accepting the changes in the word doc, but as I say, the text imports fine from word, it's only when you use find font, select 'calibri italic' (or whatever face imported from word), select the face you want to use instead and hit 'change all' that the italics vanish.

|

Mark as:

Currently Being Moderated

21. Peter Spier,

Oct 4, 2012 4:49 AM in reply to kevermillion

Report

It would be great if all of you who have this problem would file bug reports. Include as much detail as you can, including the font manager info, and offer the files for testing. We might get someone from engineering or QA interested in digging deeper.

If you don't have a support plan, you can file at Adobe - Feature Request/Bug Report Form

|

Mark as:

Currently Being Moderated

22. kevermillion,

Oct 4, 2012 5:01 AM in reply to Peter Spier

Report

Done, thanks Peter. Hope this one can be fixed.

|

Mark as:

Currently Being Moderated

23. Ida Engmark,

Oct 12, 2012 7:03 AM in reply to Ozzie736

Report

Did the text per any chance come from a word docx document with manual text overides?

I've seen this problem pop up for a friend of mine, and I can almost replicate it on windows. But instead of deleting the text, the text is formatted with an obscure (don't remember the name) windows system font. And it's exactly the same text that is affected by deletion on the Mac.

Saving the word file in the doc format fixes the problem.

|

Mark as:

Currently Being Moderated

24. Larry G. Schneider,

Oct 12, 2012 9:47 AM in reply to Ida Engmark

Report

The font might be Calibri (Theme Body) which is the default font for Excel and doesn't exist on a Mac. Make sure the font in the Word file is some usable font like Arial or Times New Roman.

|

Mark as:

Currently Being Moderated

25. Ida Engmark,

Oct 12, 2012 11:27 AM in reply to Larry G. Schneider

Report

Larry: Not Calibri. Wasn't a standard western font, but (i noticed after I dug through the document again) an Arabic font.

For some reason the InDesign tekst import on the PC recognizes the troublesome tekst as Arabic and assigns the font MS Mincho (the one I couldn't remember).

However there's no use of this font in the word document. There is however a fragmentation of the word XML data that corresponds a little too well to the text that goes missing on Mac, when the font is changed.

However not all text that follows these rules disappear. I just had my friend do some tests and is awaiting responses.

|

Mark as:

Currently Being Moderated

26. mts_lgr,

Dec 18, 2012 9:41 PM in reply to Peter Spier

Report

I too have experienced Find Font spasmodically stripping out text. I'm running OS 10.7.5 on an iMac and its happening in both CS 5.5 and CS 6 (having recently upgraded). My font manager is Suitcase Fusion 4. Through trial and error I have found its more likely to occur if you have the Type Tool selected before going into the Find Font dialogue box. It seems to be a lot more stable if you are on the Selection tool first. It certainly is a very dangerous problem so I hope a solution can be found.

|

Mark as:

Currently Being Moderated

27. KevD77,

Dec 19, 2012 1:06 AM in reply to mts_lgr

Report

Thanks for that tip mts-lgr, I'll try that out. Just yesterday I got 3 hours into typesetting a large report only to notice the italics had vanished due to this InDesign problem. I had to start from scratch. It's infuriating, and the fact that it hasn't been fixed in CS6 is worrying.

|

Mark as:

Currently Being Moderated

28. xwang3525,

Apr 8, 2013 3:11 PM in reply to KevD77

Report

Has a commom solution been found for this issue? I experience it all the time, but it's not a consistent problem. It ocurrs with some word files while not others.

|

Mark as:

InDesign

Please stop "Find Font" from deleting text when I select "change all."

Sep 17, 2012 6:42 AM

More Like This

Bookmarked By (1)

Answers + Points = Status