Random color (apparently in use) in new indesign documents

[rundenk]

I keep opening indd docs and when i clean the colours up (delete all unused) i am always left with a 100% cyan colour. there is no evidence of this colour being used anywhere.

Also to support this: when I create a new INDD doc the colour is found in that too. (in use)

thoughts?

[Steve Werner]

100% Cyan is one of the default colors which is included in every print document.

If you open InDesign with no documents open, you can remove swatches and add swatches to choose the swatch colors you'd like in each new document.

[rundenk]

Yes cyan is one of the defaults but what my issue is my documents all say cyan is in use when it isnt.

I can create a new indd doc and even as a fresh blank doc cyan shows that it is somewhere in use which is impossible because there is nothing in the blank file.

[Steve Werner]

How are you determining that "cyan is in use"? Why don't you just remove cyan from the document?

[rundenk]

because indesign tells me so

One can select "all colour not in use" to group delete them.

It always leaves cyan behind

Then when you manually select cyan to delete it says its in use and you have to choose another colour to replace it with

[Steve Werner]

The reason it leaves Cyan is that it is used for a particular purpose. It doesn't mean that Cyan is being used on an InDesign page object.

If you've created a paragraph style, and you have added a local override, you can turn on the Style Override Highlighter to show the override. It uses Cyan as the color of highlighting:

[rundenk]

I don't think this is the reason. The files have no stylesheets.

If this is the reason then it's odd that indesign would need a swatch in the colour palette to do what would normally be an internal process. It doesn't require swatches to render any other parts of the GUI.

i can provide a file sample if I knew how to.

[Steve Werner]

The swatch apparently has to be there in case you used styles and had an override. I don't know why but I've heard it mentioned before.

[Sandee Cohen]

Steve,

I don't think that's true about the style override as I deleted all the colors leaving Cyan and then redefined it to be a bright orange. The color for style overrides stayed Cyan. I believe that override color is just a preview color, nothing more.

However, it is true that the Cyan swatch refuses to be deleted unless something is changed. Even if you redefine the swatch, it can't be deleted without asking for a substitute.

I think it's just a glitch.

[rundenk]

I think I agree Sandee. I just did a ring around to other designers in other sites and they are having the same glitch.

They all find it terribly annoying

[Laubender · Accepted solution]

Hi,

there are some threads about this problem here in the forums.

Especially see this one here:

Strange problem: Pasting text to InDesign CC2015 always adds cyan color

Regards,
Uwe

[rundenk]

thanks for that. I searched the forums using all sorts of keywwords but never found it.

[Laubender]

See also Rob Day's comments later in the thread.
And Rob's and my scripting efforts to get around the problem.

My answer, that was marked correct by the OP does not reflect the end of the discussion.
So I think, that in a very narrow sense there is a scripting solution.

But it can break any time if you are doing two things:

1. Paste text from e.g. TextEdit app when on a Mac.
2. Open InDesign documents from a different source than the InDesign on your machine.

And after every trash of the preferences you have to run the scripting workaround again.

Regards,
Uwe

[Sandee Cohen]

Uwe,

Thanks for the link to that other thread. Indeed Cyan is listed as the default color if paragraph shading is turned on. But I still think there is a glitch. For instance:

Go to Paragraph Shading for Basic Paragraph.

Turn on Shading.

Change Cyan to Black.

Turn off Shading.

At this point you would expect that Cyan would be able to be deleted without a problem since it is not being used in the shading dialog box.

But Cyan is still considered in use.

I think that's the bug.

[Laubender]

Sandee Cohen wrote:

… At this point you would expect that Cyan would be able to be deleted without a problem since it is not being used in the shading dialog box.

But Cyan is still considered in use.

I think that's the bug.

Hi Sandee,

I don't think it's a bug.

It's a bad design decision by the developers.

The swatch is part of the default [No Paragraph Style] paragraph style of the app text preferences no-one can really change.

I argued against using "100c 0m 0y 0k" for paragraph shading before CC 2015 came out with this feature, but it was too late.
If it were e.g. a tint value of [Black]—20 % perhaps—everybody would be happy, I think…

Regards,
Uwe

[Sandee Cohen]

Totally agree!!!

The 20% black tint is the default for the every=other-fill for tables. And never caused a problem since tables were first introduced.

A 20% black tint for shading would be perfect, especially since Cyan is screwing up jobs where people don’t want the hint of color to appear anywhere.

I’m just glad I understand why we can’t delete Cyan without the alert.

[rundenk]

thanks for the help. clearly a problem that no one other than developers can fix

[Dazzer2473]

the output manager palette in high res PDF Export