Cannot make any selections whatsoever

[Skogur]

The title says it all. Randomly last night while working on a project, I was unable to make any selections. When I click on something, the bounding box doesn't show up, therefore I'm unable to edit, resize, or move it. Even when dragging with my selection/direct selection tools, a box doesn't show up, only the X and Y coordinates box. Nothing is locked or grouped together. I'm still allowed to make new objects, but I'm at a loss at how to fix this without starting a new project from scratch.

[Cari Jansen]

First thing to try is restoring your InDesign preferences to default ('out of the box') settings:

• Quit out of InDesign then
• Set preferences in Adobe InDesign  (see Restore all preference and default settings).

Let's see if that works.

Also does the problem occur ONLY in a particular document? or in all documents, including new documents you create?

If it's only the one document:

• Check which Screen mode you are in, and change to View > Screen Mode > Normal if needed.
• Under View > Extras ensure that Frame Edges are shown.
• Also expand the layers in the Layers panel to check that objects aren't locked (I'm assuming you have checked that based on your note on nothing being locked/grouped).

IF this fails, see if you can take a screen capture of what you see in InDesign and post that, it might be immediately clear to one of us what the cause of the issue is.

[Skogur]

I restored all preference and default settings and that didn't do anything. Screen mode is also in normal, and frame edges are shown. This is only happening in this one specific document, so something must've happened along the way for it to do this.

This is what I see:

You can't see my mouse but in the screenshot it was hovering over the white rectangle, but the bounding box didn't appear. Currently at the point where I might just chalk it up to a loss and start from scratch because I have no idea what the issue is.

[Cari Jansen · Accepted solution]

Can you click on the' >' in the layers panel and display all the objects on Layer 1 and share a screenshot?

• Are all the elements on the page visible?
• If some or all are missing from Layer 1, they are probably placed on a master page. (Check the Master Pages in the Pages panel).

What happens if you try this:

• File > Save As.
• Set Format to InDesign CS4 or later and save the document as an IDML
• Then File > Open and navigate to the IDML file to open it.
• Does that fix things?

[Skogur]

Your first suggestion fixed it. Everything is on one layer so I found I have to manually select the element on the layers panel if I want to edit it. Thank you!

[Cari Jansen]

Excellent!

See if there is an object above the design elements you want to edit that might be blocking you from selecting them as well.

There is a little trick you can apply to click through a 'stack' of overlapping objects as well:

• Press Cmd-key and click on the object you want to select. keep clicking till it is selected.
• Then if you want to make it the top most object, choose Object > Arrange > Bring to Front

[Skogur]

Yep, that was the issue! There was a rogue random object hidden in the very top corner that was only viewable if zoomed out all of the way, after deleting it I was able to move everything like normal again. Thanks again!

[Cari Jansen]

Glad you managed to get it all working again and pleasure to help figure out what the issue was.

Happy InDesigning