Placed text comes out in little boxes

[carrie1009]

Hi all...I'm no pro at Indesign, but have done a few projects...this time when I'm placing text from an .rtf, it doesn't flow across the pages as other documents I've done, instead it comes out in little squares..the title is in a box with blue borders, the authors name, etc. the rest of the document is just ..little boxes. help?

thanks in advance

carrie

[Derek Cross]

There are several issues here – 1) the pink behind the lettering means you don't have that font installed on your computer. 2) the little red cross means you have more text than the text frame can contain (you need to make the frame larger, or make the type smaller or cut some text). or 3) To make the text flow from one frame to the other you need to understand how to use the in and our points in text frames: Thread text among frames in Adobe InDesign

[carrie1009]

Thanks Derek...I should mention that I did do the shift-click....and the arrow turned into the wavy line like it was going to flow...the font itself isn't important and I'll change it once I get it all into the document, but I've never seen it in chunks like that..I have over 230 pages of those little boxes! I used the black arrow tool to place the text, and the white one as well, but still end up with boxes...

[Derek Cross]

Are you using Paragraph (and Character) Styles?

[carrie1009]

I've placed it into a document that has character and paragraph styles, but had deleted the text that was there...so far I can't apply any formatting to it. I've done this before, so I can reuse the same style for the customer, and it's worked, this one has me stumped.

[Derek Cross]

Sorry, it's 7.00pm in the UK and I have to go out, maybe someone else can chip in.

[carrie1009]

do you think maybe it's the document itself? the rtf?

[Derek Cross]

Hi Carrie

I suggest you read up about using Primary Text Frames.

It's difficult to explain but you can get a ten-day free trial with Lynda.com - have a look at this online video tutorial:

Creating Long Documents with InDesign CC

Then come back here with specific questions.

[jane-e]

What happens in you place the same text in a new document?

If it's okay there, check to see if you have an Object style applied as a default in your current document. With nothing selected, look at Object Styles. If you see a plus, remove the overrides.

[carrie1009]

it did the same in a new blank document. thousands of little squares.

i tried to copy and paste the original rtf into a new document, and paste it into ID, and it didn't do the little boxes, but the formatting is atrocious. I'm thinking it was be the original file, but i've tried converting it from pdf to word and it still comes up little boxes. I'm just stumped.

[jane-e]

Click on one of the frames and look at it in the Story Editor. What do you see there?

[carrie1009]

it's like this..

[Derek Cross]

Which exact version of InDesign and OS?

[carrie1009]

wndows 7 and Indesign cc 2014 release

[Barb Binder]

Could you upload the InDesign doc to Dropbox, and then post a link so that we can take a look at it?

[jane-e]

Also post the rtf file, or at least part of it.

[carrie1009]

Dropbox - bk_boxes.docx

Dropbox - BK_boxes.indd

[Sandee Cohen]

Carrie,

I can't find a single reason why your text has come in like this. It's as if someone didn't know how to place the text file. And kept drawing frames with new text.

There's no rational reason for what you've got. And if you say you tried holding the shift key, and got all the "boxes" (frames) I don't know what to tell you.

Have you tried this with other text? And have you tried resetting your ID preferences by holding Ctrl-Alt-Shift while opening ID?

[carrie1009]

I did a similar one just last week, from the same person....i did indeed use the shift key, and that's how it flowed....i have not tried the id resetting...

[Barb Binder]

Well, that was mysterious. I deleted pages 2-end, removed the text from page one and then auto-flowed the file back in. It worked normally.

Here is my file: Dropbox - No BK_boxes.indd

I turned on hidden characters and text threads so that you could see what was going on. There were a few pages of ¶s, but I have no idea what the boxes were all about.

[carrie1009]

barb, it won't let me open your file..it says yours is newer than mine =( but when i did what you did, it flowed. once i put the entire document in, it flowed, and as soon as I applied paragraph styling to it, the paragraphs jumped apart in some places as much as a page and some places the dialog paragraphs all ran together into one sentence. but no more chopped up boxes. so half the problem disappeared, new ones started.

i don't know what else to try besides manually fixing each paragraph, which is not going to be fun 😃 but .....it's gotta get done..

here's the latest images from the book.....the top line on the right is supposed to be directly under the last paragraph on the left, and here's my CSS styles for paragraph.

thanks so much for your input, everyone. i've not had this kind of trouble before!

carrie

[Jongware]

Carrie, there are lots of Hard Page Breaks in the original Word document, and they do carry over into InDesign. You can clearly see this when you enable Show Hidden Characters.

[Barb Binder · Accepted solution]

Carrie:

What version are you on? I can send the file in a format you can open if that would help, although I don't think you need it anymore.

In the meantime, what we are seeing in your file are lots of extra returns, which will make what you are describing happen. Use Type > Show Hidden Characters to expose the returns.

\

InDesign makes this very easy to clean up:

1. Click in the story.
2. Edit > Find/Change
3. Query: Remove Trailing White Space, Change All
   

And while you are at it, run the Multiple Space to Single Space Query as well. You've got lots of extra spaces all over the place, too. Then I think you should be good to go.

[jane-e]

Carrie,

Here are two screen shots.

• One is your Story Editor and

• the other is one spread.

You have large linked frames on every page, and many small anchored frames with small amounts of text inside each linked frame.

I saw this recently with a client where the Word document was in text boxes (frames) and it did a similar thing in InDesign as what we are seeing here. I don't see text boxes in the Word sample you sent us. But I was also unable to match the exact same text. I did a search for "This book is a work of fiction" in the Word document and did not find it.

Please look to see if there are frames in the Word document.

Also, you said it was an rtf document, but it is docx. What happens if you save it as rtf?

[jane-e]

Also, I am seeing this definition for Normal:

There is a plus after Normal. When I create a new style based on the overrides, I get this:

The only thing that jumps out at me is the Russian language, since your document is not in Russian.