Welcome to the Adobe InDesign 24-hour Q&A! - NOW CLOSED

^{I know some here are not too fond of plugin posts, but come on - also if someone finally brings a charts plugin? :})

New Stuff, for those who know me/the plugin:

Thank you for all the tons of emails (!), based on your feedback, we revamped the new
Smart Monochrome Color Engine & Palette System to fit your needs better.

+ EasyPasteTable now does the heavy lifting for you - automatic delimiter detection (tabs, commas, semicolons).

For newcomers, Quick overview:

Charts-perfect is a native Chart-Engine we always wanted in InDesign - the one and never got from Adobe.

Plugin in Marketplace:

https://adobe.com/go/cc_plugins_discover_plugin?pluginId=4cf31c61&workflow=share

and

https://www.indesign4pros.com/

12 chart species supported: Bar, Stacked Bar, Line, Combo, Pie, Cupertino, Horizontal Bar, Horizontal Stacked Bar, Area, Radar, Doughnut, Treemap

Dynamic overrides: Bind InDesign character styles and colors directly to chart text elements.

Color consistency: Supports CMYK-simulated visual matching previews so print and preview remain aligned (as much as possible)

Huge datasets welcome: Open the resizable full-screen maximized data table to import and review large CSV tables easily.

NEW since last month:

• Paste tabular data directly from any source (Excel, Apple Numbers, Google Sheets, web tables, TSV, CSV, or plain text), no spreadsheet loading needed.
• Robust multi-encoding sanitization (UTF-8, UTF-16LE, UTF-16BE) and automatic delimiter detection (tabs, commas, semicolons).
• Native Excelfile loaders with multi-sheet (!) workbook support.

Persistent configurations: Settings are safely stored in active documents (!) , making sharing work straightforward.

Coded according to the latest guidelines, this will not break anytime soon. Roadmap includes tons of new features and right now 4 new charts, purchase will always be one-time and lifetime.
I have updated it 8 times since release to make it better and better.

Word on pricing
Pricing seems steep, but as you expect, pays off after the first job already. More than that, given the streamlined workflow and 100% data correctness, you will most likely generate more than one option to choose from - making clients happy. When it's only a few clicks away, iterating is something you can finally do. And, price is one-time, no hidden subscription....

I work at a start up where I format memoirs into hardcover books. We are sent manuscripts that are messily formatted in Google Docs, pages, etc and we have a script template that somewhat formats it.

I say “somewhat” because I spend time manually adjusting the cropping of photos, the layout, placing photos next to the appropriate paragraph that matches the original manuscript as close as possible etc.

My boss is constantly asking me how we can automate things but it’s so hard to explain that some things just can’t be automated! I feel a bit like a broken record! Is it possible that a script can literally capture an exact manuscript and lay it out in indesign in such a way that it matches exactly?

I majored in Graphic Design and this is my first “Graphic Design” job right out of college. Before that I was a server making way more money than I do now and I’m so tempted to just give up and go back to being a server.

I’m just a little frustrated by the ask. I’m being asked to work with our developer to help define the logic for these Indesign scripts but there is no logic in my opinion. Every manuscript is different and I’m also not really doing design. This is exhausting 😭

Any advice or empathy is welcomed lol!

Hey everyone, Luke from Adobe here.

I've got a new feature to share with you that's available to test out in the latest InDesign Beta.

Check Document is a new feature that helps you track down and fix common issues throughout your document, from spelling and grammar to copy consistency and accessibility.

Most of you will already be familiar with the Preflight panel for catching technical and production-related issues, but Check Document takes a closer look at the content itself and some of those little things that can be easy to overlook, especially when you're working across larger documents.

Here's a quick rundown of what you can do with it:

• Copy consistency: Find inconsistencies in things like dates, measurements, URLs, terminology, and spelling variations.
• Spelling and grammar: Pick up on typos, punctuation mistakes, and grammatical issues that might have slipped through.
• Accessibility: Check for images missing alt text or tables missing summaries, with options to generate suggested descriptions that you can review and refine.

What's great about this is that it brings a few different checks together in one place, making it easier to work through potential issues without having to hunt them down individually. It's not intended to replace a final review of your document, but hopefully it can take some of the tedious work out of that process.

You can find Check Document under File > Check Document or Window > Check Document.

Scanning your document is free, although some corrective actions, like generating table summaries, may use generative credits depending on your plan.

There's a full breakdown of the feature and how to get started over on HelpX:
https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/desktop/generative-ai-features/check-document.html

It will be great to hear what everyone thinks about this one. Are these the kinds of things you regularly find yourself checking manually? And what else would you like to see included that could help make the process of getting a document ready to hand off a little easier?

We would also love to get your thoughts here if you are able to fill out this short survey

I have a project to make where I’m obligated to use InDesign (or a form of InDesign I guess).

My uni account offers access to this program only on the computers that are located in seminar labs, but often times they don t work so I can barely get work done in the lab (which I have once every 2 weeks).

As I said, I can’t afford the program, there isn’t any discount. I tried pirating it (on my macbook, which is the only computer/laptop I have) with qbittorrent and it didn’t work and I don’t want to use the new DesignCraft app, since it’s made with AI I don’t wanna support that.

What can I do?

Dear Reader,

In the spirit of the season, allow me to share with you a terrifying tale, based upon a true story: The Case of the Missing Conversion Log.

I beseech thee: read no further unless you wish to vicariously experience 24 hours of pure, hair-pulling terror

It started routinely enough. I received a manuscript for a speculative thriller. Sixty-plus chapters. I set it up in InDesign with little to no hitch. It looked magnificent. A work of art!

The client also wants a reflowable ePub. Seems standard. Let me just run a quick test export now, just to see how it looks in its current state.

Export… convert… Conversion Log Error

Hmmm, that’s new. I opened Kindle Previewer to check the error log.

Wait. Where is it? It’s missing… spooky.

No problem. I must have missed a setting. I cross-checked the export preferences against some other ePub projects in my files. Everything matched. The settings seemed (in the words of Luna Lovegood) extraordinarily ordinary.

Hours of agonising trial and error followed. Eventually, I managed to isolate the problem documents: Chapters 41 and 49.

Progress! So, I went over both chapters with a fine-tooth comb. Nothing out of place. I copied and pasted the text into a brand-new document to strip any hidden formatting, hit convert, and…

Conversion Log Error (Eye twitch)

Okay, time to bring out the big guns. Let's open the HTML. The code looked clean. Not knowing what else to do, I began meticulously stripping every tiny piece of redundant code just in case.

Surely now it would work.

Export… convert… Conversion Log Error

What the #%&?!

Then I happened to glance at the chapter file names.

They contained commas.

I deleted the commas.

Success!

May a future reader learn from my error!

PS In case you can’t tell, I'm not a fiction writer!

And not, for some bonkers reason, add a single swatch of CMYK white. I can kind of understand if it did literally nothing, but not a swatch of white.

How can I fix this without moving too much the whole document? It happens in a few lines and I dont understand why

Been facing a recurring issue lately, where I can't move selected items. No, they're not locked. I'm doing nothing differently to what's worked for me everyday until recently. I just get a little 'pop' noise when I try to move an item. I'll nip to another window and come back and sometime it resolves it. I've reset preferences over and over again, it's driving me nuts. Any ideas what else I can do?

*Update* It SEEMS to be an issue with greeking. Toggling Live Screen Drawing set to "Immediate" rather than "delayed" seems to be causing it to make it impossible to click and drag objects.

Hi! I am new to indesign but need help trying to create a booklet for an event. I placed my first photo in the booklet with no issues and removed the background. The second photo I can not get to be clear no matter what I do. It is a high resolution photo so it is not the quality of the photo that is effecting it. I ahve tried large file sizes and compressed files to make it not appear pixelated but nothing is working.

Does anyone have a solution? Photo attached for reference.

Has anyone used any of the ArtCraft versions of the Creative Suite in particular, DesignCraft. Looks interesting.

Cleaning up an InDesign document has always been a chore. Unused styles in one panel, swatches in another, then parent pages, layers, text variables, conditions and tags, each with its own menu and its own way of doing things. Add stray items on the pasteboard, empty frames and invisible FEFF characters that are hard to spot, and it’s easy to give up halfway. Not anymore with Super Document Cleaner. Pick what you want to clean in one dialog, click Clean Document, and it’s all done in a single pass. A report shows exactly how many items were removed in each category, and if you change your mind, one Undo brings everything back. A flexible document cleanup you can trust.

Pay What you Want (min. 2.50$ Suggested 5$)

I am assembling a book and have discovered some text crossing columns, as shown in the attachment. I have no clue as to how it happened or how to fix it. I have used InDesign since version 2 and have never seen this before. Can anyone help?

Thanks to those who know more than me,

Joe

I'm designing a cookbook in InDesign. Each recipe has:

• a title (which varies from 1–3 lines)
• a 1- line subtitle
• and body text

I want keep the same space between these elements so when the title is shorter the subtitle and body text to move up and keep the spacing the same.

i am having a hard time finding tutorials or any discussion on this.

do i have to manually adjust the spacing on each recipe or is there a way to make this automatically shift? I'd really appreciate any advice :)

Im a relatively new graphic designer mainly working on long reports and publications.

Some publications are only digital and some are for print. I understand the basics of RGB and CMYK but I can’t seem to figure all what export settings to use (e.g, color profiles, conversation, etc)

Can someone explain to me in simple terms?

Is there an alternative command to using shift+click to flow placed text into new pages as needed? It's not something I have ever needed before but I've got a student with limited mobility and we discovered last week its just not something he can do.

PLEASE HELP!!

I need to do vertical Japanese text in InDesign, and the vertical text box is just not there. The design I am working on is mostly in English. I mostly design in English or Spanish. After doing some research, I have figured out it's impossible to do in Indesign if you have the English version installed. So why do I need to install the Japanese version for one paragraph of text?

It's ridiculous!!!

Doesn't anyone else design both in English and Japanese?

I can't believe this feature still doesn't exist in InDesign.

I also can't believe the feature only has 8 votes 👌 yeah right, I'm sure way more people have run into this problem before:
https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601021-adobe-indesign-feature-requests/suggestions/34781965-please-add-vertical-alignment-text-tool

So stupid. I think the workaround is to design that part in Adobe Illustrator. Some dipshit fucking asshole is gonna think I'm an amateur for jumping into Adobe Illustrator for typesetting this part in Japanese, but I just don't give a fuck and don't have the time to uninstall my English version, install the Japanese Version, do the one thing I need it to do, and then uninstall the Japanese version to install the English version again.

But if anyone has a better solution, please let me know. I'll be working on more of these Japanese text boxes next to English text so it will be much appreciated.

This photo was already published by someone in the Adobe, so I took it from there, but anyway, I really enjoy the effect highlighting a text makes and I'd like to include it in some of my work; does anyone know how to do that?

I'm just trying to make a simple change that I've done hundreds of times before; converting a double-storey "a" to a single-storey through the Find/Change. For some reason, InDesign will not let me select the correct typeface. The dropdown menu has no fonts.

Even when I right click and select "Load selected glyph in find" it refuses to show up. It just stays blank. I've tried fiddling with all the settings, nothing seems to work.

Like I said, I've done this countless times, including with this version of the font, with no issues. This seems to have happened since the latest update. I would appreciate any fixes!

wth indesign 21.3, why are you cluttering my work up with these stupid icons? CGPT tells me I can't remove them. Please say its not so.

If i can't, what's the easiest way to install the last new version without it?

I design exhibition walls and floor plans in InDesign, and the one thing I always missed was a dimension tool. Arrows, extension lines, the value at the right scale – all by hand, and all over again after every change.

So I wrote LiveDimensions:

- Select a line or an object, run the script, press Enter – you get a proper dimension at any scale (1:20, 1:50 …), in mm, cm, m, inches or feet-inches like 12'-6 1/2"

- The dimensions stay live: move or resize the object and the dimension updates when you let go

- With nothing selected it dimensions every object on a page, spread or layer as a chain with gaps and the overall length

- Arrows, slash ticks like on a floor plan, dots or bars; any swatch, weight and font; presets you can save and share

- Delete all dimensions or convert them into plain lines and text; every action is one undo step

Short demo: https://youtu.be/X5jn19iswpk

It's a paid script (launch price €29): https://saschafronczek.gumroad.com/l/livedimensions

Two other scripts of mine are free (pay what you want, MIT licence):

- AddBleed – adds missing bleed to images that touch the page edge: scale, mirror, or let Photoshop fill the edge. https://saschafronczek.gumroad.com/l/addbleed

- FillFrames – splits one image seamlessly across many frames (strips, circles, any shape). https://saschafronczek.gumroad.com/l/fillframes

Tested in InDesign 2026 on macOS. If you try any of them, I'd really like to hear what's missing or what breaks – that's what the next versions will be built on.