InDesign-CC: Selection Tools Not Working

[Jim_Nee]

I've just downloaded InDesign CC and am having a problem with the various selection tools.

With the Text Selection Tool active, I double-click a text frame and hold, and the cursor is placed on the text inside the frame. But I can no longer drag from where the cursor is to highlight the text.

When I click again to start highlighting the text, the text itself becomes inactive, the text frame becomes active and my attempt to highlight drags the frame. The tool panel shows that the Text Selection Tool is still active.

Once I double click into the text frame, the only way I can edit text is to use Shift + arrows.

In Preferences > Type I have enabled and disabled the "Triple Click to Select a Line", but there is no change in the behavior described above.

Similarly, if I switch to the Hand Tool and grab a portion of the page, the frame I happen to be over moves instead of the page. Grabbing on a part of the page where there is no frame does nothing at all.

In fact, this behavior is the same no matter which tool in the toobar I have active: the Rectangle Tool does not draw a rectangle, but moves the text frame; same with the Pencil Tool, etc.

The document itself was upgrade from CS6, but creating a new document does not change the behavior.

I've followed the instructions in the Troubleshooting 101: Replace, or "trash" your InDesign preferences article <http://forums.adobe.com/thread/526990>, dleted the InDesign Defaults file and restarted, but that has made no difference.

At this point, ID-CC is thoroughly unusable.

Running Mac OS 10.8.4, 16gigs RAM.

[MMeadPond]

I'm having the same complaints. I've been using inDesign since its first version. I'm used to being able to bounce through from one item to the next, moving, shifting, and intuitively designing before honing in on the details. I ENJOY rapidly working in inDesign. ("Rapidly" being the operative word).

This new CC makes it virtually impossible.

Every time I try to grab an image or a type element, the solid selector tool should grab and allow me to move it rapidly. IT SHIFTS TO THE HAND TOOL!

It turns into the CONTENT tool.

I have lost literally hours tonight trying to slog through this mess.

I'll say something else:

I am a long time Adobe fonts, Illustrator, Photoshop, etc., user.

From the beginning. On a Mac.

Give me back the intuitive ease of use. I don't like InDesign acting like a Microsoft Office Program! I don't like Adobe programs so icon heavy that I spend my time trying to guess what the icon is for. I hate that about Windows products.

Less is way more when it comes to ease of use and the ability to work without the PROCESS and the APPLICATiON interjecting itself into the whole workflow.

Please fix this mess. Thank you.

[Peter Spier]

It sounds to me like you are used to grabbing in the center of a frame to move it (as am I and many other longtime users) and you're running afoul of the "donut" or Content Grabber that pops up so you can repostion content within the frame without switching tools, which is a big timesaver if you can get used to it. The trick is to grab off-center (or at least pay attention that you are not grabbing the donut), or you can turn the Content Grabber off entirely in the View menu under Extras.

[MMeadPond]

Thanks, Peter

It's that and more. It's not only the donut. It's really anywhere around a content box--type or image. I've now resorted to clicking on the blue square on the outside boundary (top right) and hoping it will let me pick up an element. It works, but it's super slow and super non-intuitive. Slog, slog, slog. Ugh.

Thank you for taking the time to answer me, but really, it's not as easy as just the donut. I will turn the donut off, though.

Any idea if I can turn off the funky brown angle lines whenever I turn something? Is it tied to the other smart guides?

See? This is another non-intuitive feature. I suppose if someone wanted to design-by-numbers it's great.

But after decades designing catalogs, magazines, advertising--in Pagemaker, Quark and now inDesign--I just want to design.

I want the process and the application to get out of my way.

Thanks again, Peter.

[Peter Spier]

You need to be careful, too, about not double-clicking.

[MMeadPond]

Peter, I realized this is another problem. Two clicks on the image or the text and the hand appears. Why is that?

I realize this is one of the things that is contributing to my frustration . . . why is it only NOW that it's a problem? Is this a new "feature?"

M

[Peter Spier]

It's not really entirely new. Double-clicking an image has changed to the direct select tool and double-click again changes back, at least as far back as CS3 (the earliest I have convenient access to), but there has been a fairly recent change (CS5) that double-clicking gives you the hand tool without actually swtiching to the Direct Select tool in the toolbox. Once you get used to it, it's actually a great convenience as you dont need to change back to the Selection tool to select the next object. New selection behaviors for hidden objects (selection persistence) were also introduced at the same time making it easier to select and move objects that are behind others. If you are just moving up from CS4 or earlier it will take you a while to acclimate, but I suspect that once you do you'll find it more productive.

[MMeadPond]

Peter,

I've been using CS6 for awhile (Creative Cloud), but doing more web design/development than print the last few months. Hence, my frustration that the application seems to have turned into a Windows application while I wasn't looking. 😕

Is there any way I can turn these superdooper features OFF?

Thanks for the advice and insight.

[Peter Spier]

And here I thought it was getting more Mac-centric all the time.

You can turn off the content grabber, and you can decide if you want frame edges to highlight as you pass over them in Preview mode and Mac users can turn off the Application Frame (though I think you'll find the program works better with it on), and you can get rid of that awful dark interface, but you can't change the new selection behaviors.

[Javed_ali1]

Hi Jim,

I was able to reproduce part of your problem and not the entire problem.

With the Text Selection Tool active, I double-click a text frame and hold, and the cursor is placed on the text inside the frame. But I can no longer drag from where the cursor is to highlight the text.

This is what i was able to perform after this i waited for a second or two and was able to select text fine. What i suppose is happening with you is a the swing tool going wrong. There is a functionality in InDesign that if we long press any tool and leave then it switches back to the previous tool. This could be the case that is happening with you.

How long are you pressing the tool shortcut? Can you try doing the same by clicking on the tools rather than there shortcut (i know it woulld not be very convinient but just for the test), do you still face the problem. A video showing the problem would be good.

Thanks

[Christoph Letmaier]

I face the same problem as Jim Nee described in his entry message.

Steps that worked in all previous version of InDesign:

1. Triple click a text-frame and the whole text is selected

In InDesign CC the following steps are NOT working

1. Triple click a text-frame - the text will be NOT selected, no matter how often I click.

In InDesign CC the following steps are working

1. Doubleclick a text frame. The cursor appear in the text

2. I wait a second.

3. Doubleclick and the whole text is selected.

It is really unacceptable to wait a second to select all the text considering a fast workflow - perhaps Adobe can explain what is the advantage to wait a second every time. It is really annoying.

Copying and pasting text is one of the most use steps in InDesign, to ruin this function is a very bad idea.

[Angus Hume]

Have just upgraded from CS5 and experiencing the same issue. Text selection is terrible. More alarming is that I see the problem has been around for at least 5 months. Yikes!

[Rison-2DUdjd]

Hi,

i was used to clik 4-5 times in one point of text frame and whole text was selected.

Now in CC it wokrs as you described. You have to wait one second.

But I have workaround, and selecting is almost fast as before.

Doubleclick to text frame and move mose out of cursor position, then you can make immediately clicks to select what you want.

(I first doubleclick frame whatever, then move cursor to position where i can start selecting.)

A minute of training and you forget about one second delay.

[Christoph Letmaier]

Hey Rison, thanks for your efforts, but this solution sounds like a famous austrian songs tells: "Happy is, who forget about that what he can't change." - that is not really satisfying.

[Rison-2DUdjd]

Hey, if i want to live with CC, i must serach for procedures that make my life easier. (floating windows hidden, preflight turned off...)

I love working on documents with CS6, it is skyrocket against CC.

I dont know, why selecting desnt work like was in CS6, i believe developers had reason for blocking multiclicks to make fast selection.

[Christoph Letmaier]

I think the reason is just commercial and we have to live with a companys policy. They don't take so much time for testing. The businessmodel tells that InDesign CC must launch on a specific date, so the debugging-work is not done properly.

Another example of a CC-Bug: whenever you open InDesign, the menu-palettes (e.g. that for color-selection, text, paragraph...) are closed. So why the hell is that? If I want to change something I have to reopen the referring palette. There is no reason for this delay of the working process.

The answer I get from a livechat with a adobe customer-center in India was: "We have something changed." The employee did'nt explained why.

I don't understand why there does'nt exist a checklist which all functions for testing, it would be very easy to handle.

I wrote a compaint with an exact description to Adobe weeks ago, I did'nt get even an answer yet.

[Rison-2DUdjd]

When i launch InDesign CC, menu palettes are opened.

Try to remove preferences, it helped me avoid some bugs (only one undo, error with data merge, ...) – hold down cmd-alt-ctrl-shift and rightclick indesign icon in the dock – select Open.

[Javed_ali1]

Hi Christoph,

I apologise that you are facing issues with InDesign.

There are certain cases when bugs are left out but be rest assured we are making great efforts trying to give out the best quality in InDesign.

To your problem:

Have you tried deleting the preferences and caches.

Please see the thread on how to delete the preferences and caches

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/526990

Thanks & Regards

Javed

[Christoph Letmaier]

Please don't aks me questions like "have you turned your machine on" - if you read the whole conversation, you will discover, that I tryed your "solution" with other Adobe employess several times - without success.

You should care more about a apropriate solution than bothering me with company-robot-like friendlyness, i'm not at all interested in that, because of the fact, that my requests were ignored so far.

So, if you are serious, please send me a contact-E-Mail-Adresse of a competent Adobe Employee. You can send the contact to my account-E-Mail-Adress, as a Adobe-Member you should have access to my account.

Your employes offered me the solution I can call an US-phone number. Because I reside in Austria I don't want make such expensive calls, I guess it will me cost a lot of money just to get conneceted with the right person.

[Peter Spier]

Cristoph,

Lighten up. You revived a thread from a year ago, and most of the folks who respond to these questions get your posts by email so they never see what went before. Civility will get you more help faster than nastiness.

[Christoph Letmaier]

Basically I agree with you completely.

But: I discuss this issue until now since several months. I contacted Adobe Live Chat several times without any success. I sent a detailed error-report to Adobe, nobody answers me. No answer is not polite at all, so the rules of civility were broken by Adobe.

Further, the whole issue took my time now several hours, including the testing around that issue I made already, so I write this error-report without salery, but I pay Adobe every month a fee to use the software. Because of that I expect competent customer service.

Please understand now my rising anger about the fact being ignored although there is a serious subject and to read the same copy-and-paste phrases again and again.

I want to have a solution for this problem. Perhaps you can give me an E-Mail-Contact to a Adobe Member so I can discuss that issue with him.

[Peter Spier]

I have no connection to Adobe other than as a volunteer here. I can tell you though, that you are unlikely to get a response to a normal bug report, though you may do better with a paid support case.

The development team for ID (the live chat folks are probably useless, by the way -- they are paid to answer the phone and read a script. If they've ever actually used an Adobe program I'd be very surprised) certainly knows about what's going on -- whether they can modify the current behavior without breaking something else, and how high fixing this particular problem might be on the priority list are not things anyone but they can answer, and they are constrained from saying very much at all by both corporate policy and some aspects of US corporate and securities laws.

I don't know if CC was rushed. I did not beta test this version (I have tested some others, and I can assure you that in those cases testing was quite rigorous and you owe a thankyou to the folks who did it because we found many problems you'll never see, and modified many features to make them more user-friendly). I do know that going forward there is no more strict timeline for new version releases and in theory this should mean that new releases come out only after they are thoroughly tested and ready. That certainly was the case with the 9.1 release that users were clamoring for, but was not released until all of the testing was complete.

[Christoph Letmaier]

Hi Peter! Thanks for the comprehensive answer. I appreciate the work of all testers. I understand now a little better how the release process works.

How you became a tester? You got payed for your beta-testing?

[Peter Spier]

You can apply to become part of a pre-elease program at https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=prerelease_interest

There is no pay, but you do have the ability to influence the development, and you'll meet some very interesting people while learning an incredible amount about your software.

[Javed_ali1]

Hi Cristoph,

You have mentioned two issues above.

The first is of the selection issue. I acknowledge that this issue is present in InDesign CC and is one that the InDesign team is investigating. It is already mentioned above that this issue is one that the ID team has been able to reproduce.

The other issue is

Another example of a CC-Bug: whenever you open InDesign, the menu-palettes (e.g. that for color-selection, text, paragraph...) are closed. So why the hell is that? If I want to change something I have to reopen the referring palette. There is no reason for this delay of the working process.

This is the issue for which i was trying to gain more information as to why you are facing this issue. I dont think this one line of information is enough to figure out why you are facing the problem. I tried this on my machine with the given information and it seems to work, upon restart of InDesign the palettes that were earlier open remain opened.

This is NOT a known issue and is one that i would like to gain more info about and it is with respect to this issue that i mentioned that you try cleaning the prefs and caches.

If you still happen to be facing the issue(after cleaning the prefs\cache) i would suggest that you report the issue via the link

https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

Or you can mail the issue at sharewithid@adobe.com

Please note that simply writing one line in the information will not be of much help, until the ID team is able to reproduce the issue there is no point that they will be able to fix it.

Thanks

Javed

InDesign Engineering team