r/indesign May 08 '25

Adobe InDesign Team LIVE 24hr Q&A!

34 Upvotes

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

(Thank you to everyone who participated in this 24-hour Q&A. The sessions have concluded and are not actively monitored, but we will continue to be present in the subreddit if you want to ask questions and provide feedback.)

Members of the Adobe InDesign Team from around the world will join for 24 hours to chat with you about the latest product updates, product performance, general feedback and other topics on your mind. Please feel free to speak up, and know that we are here to help!

We recently announced some updates at Adobe MAX London (below) and would be excited to hear your thoughts on them.

  • Create and style math expressions Use the Math Expressions panel to create, edit, and style math expressions directly on the canvas.
  • Apply creative effects to the selected text or shape using text prompts Elevate your layouts with Generative Fill (beta) and turn SVGs, shapes, or text into images with custom textures and effects.
  • Convert PDFs to InDesign Documents (beta) Drag and drop a PDF document into InDesign for conversion and edit the layout and text while preserving design fidelity.
  • InDesign Beta - Edit stories faster with on-canvas text editing with InCopy on the web Work on assigned content directly on the canvas in your browser. Save time with in-context typing and quick formatting tools.

We greatly appreciate your input and look forward to having some great discussions.


r/indesign Jun 19 '23

/r/InDesign has Re-Opened on Monday, June 19th

18 Upvotes

Hello,

/r/indesign has re-opened on Monday June 19th with new rule changes. Reddit has made it clear that users, not volunteer moderators are the true owners of subreddits. So the community rules are changing to reflect that.

Going forward the only subreddit-specific rule is that any content you submit must not break any of the site-wide Reddit rules.

Please be aware that the site-wide Reddit rules will still be enforced by the moderators of this subreddit and Reddit. For more detail on them see Reddit's content policy here.

The short version is:

  • No harassment/bullying
  • Respect the privacy of others
  • No sexual content of minors
  • No impersonating in a misleading/deceptive manor
  • Label content correctly (is it NSFW or not?)
  • No illegal content
  • Do not break/interfere with the website

Reddit enforces these rules and we will be reporting users who break any of those rules to Reddit. We encourage every user to report any content that breaks site-wide rules to do so as well.

You will also be banned from the subreddit for breaking any of Reddit's site-wide rules.

If you have questions feel free to ask them in the comments and we will do our best to answer them.

For those not aware of the ongoing issues with the Reddit admins and would like to know what the hell is going on, please see the below links to get you up to speed.

If you would like to read articles on the subject, see below.

TL;DR: Reddit users and moderators are upset at the closing of third-party apps, API changes, and access to NSFW content for various reasons. Users and moderators protest by making the subreddits they are a part of/moderate private or restricted. /u/spez says that the protest has been ineffective, then days later says Reddit moderators are too powerful and will change the site's rules to weaken them. Now the admins are trying to subvert moderators to get subreddits back open.


r/indesign 5h ago

Help Investors sue Adobe execs over AI copyright statements

Thumbnail
courthousenews.com
31 Upvotes

r/indesign 17m ago

Meguna help

Post image
Upvotes

looking for 10 shadows meshes and particle preset/ids


r/indesign 4h ago

Help Share for Review is trash. Other options?

2 Upvotes

The in-app "Share for Review" is so bad, it's barely usable for me anymore. I'm frustrated with it, my client is frustrated with it. It feels like an alpha version extension instead of a full release. While in InDesign, I'll have pins and corrections on completely different pages. I usually have to navigate to the online version to see exactly what/where the change is. And at times it's just so broken that I have to send my client a PDF where they add comments or changes.

My clients and I don't like the PDF route because it's too hard to track and verify changes. Is anyone using a different method? Maybe a plugin that works well?


r/indesign 2h ago

Separate section numbers and overall page numbers on same parent page?

1 Upvotes

I understand section markers and prefixes. I'd like to have a section prefix and number, along with a section title. For example "1.3 VALUES" where the first 1 is the chapter essentially, and the .3 is the section page, and "VALUES" is the section marker. THEN I'd like to have the overall page number of the actual document as well. Below is a page as an example. I'd like to have all this auto populate by using parent pages but I don't see a way it's possible.


r/indesign 15h ago

Help Indesign plante import image

2 Upvotes

Bonjour,

Depuis ce matin indesign arrête pas de figer dès que je veux importer une image. J'ai fait un assemblage ailleurs sur ma machine (sur le bureau), mis l'image dans le dossier pour tester si ça pouvait être un soucis avec dropbox mais idem. Peut importe ce que je fais à chaque fois ça plante et je ne peux pas avancer sur mon travail...

Hier soir j'ai du faire la maj windows 2026-08 Mise à jour de la préversion (KB5120998). Est ce que le soucis peut venir de la ?

Merci d'avance.

Hugo


r/indesign 1d ago

Final text checks

4 Upvotes

I use ID once a year (for a couple of months) on a project updating five different books. As I finish up each chapter I try and remember to do a search for double spaces, spaces before and after a paragraph, and spaces before and after a tab.

I was just going through this process on a chapter and found that I must not have done it last year as there were some errant leftover double spaces that weren't part of this years edits.

Is there a best practices process for these types of checks?

What similar things do you all look for?


r/indesign 1d ago

Hyphenantion

7 Upvotes

Is there a way to permanantly turn off hyphenation? I never hyphenate and it's a pain to always have to select it whenever I want to turn it off.

Thanks to all who responded. Got it set.


r/indesign 1d ago

Help Endnote issue: content Moves

3 Upvotes

I've run into this before. Doing a book with chapter endnotes, so working within an .indb. That's fine.

I have to go in and place the endnotes myself. (Don't ask – the MS is a mess.)

This is what happens. Supposing I've created endnote 1. I place the number for endnote 2, but returning to the endnote location, it has placed a 2 but moved the content of endnote 1 to 2.

Every time.

What am I doing wrong?


r/indesign 1d ago

InDesign 2026 sometimes leaves a background thread stuck at 100% CPU — I made a fix

Post image
20 Upvotes

I've been running into a notorious problem with Adobe InDesign on Windows (specifically CC 2020 through 2026+).

Sometimes InDesign is completely idle — no active export, no rendering, no document modifications — but one CPU core remains pinned at 100% (showing as 15% to 25% total CPU in Task Manager depending on core count). Laptop fans spin constantly, battery life drains, and InDesign starts feeling sluggish.

Looking at individual threads of the InDesign.exe process, the runaway CPU usage is almost always caused by a background worker thread (often tied to font caching, Torq typography engine, or CEP/UXP panel communication) stuck in an infinite polling loop.

I created an open-source Windows utility to resolve this: ID_Thread_Fix.


How it works (v1.2 update):

  1. Attaches to InDesign (or acts as a drop-in launcher for InDesign and opened .indd documents).
  2. Waits for InDesign's main window to appear, plus an extra 25-second grace period so font engines, Torq typography, and CEP extensions can complete their initial startup burst undisturbed.
  3. Samples individual thread CPU usage over 2.0 seconds.
  4. Deliberately protects InDesign's main UI thread and primary process thread — they are never touched.
  5. Identifies background threads stuck at excessive CPU load (60%+ of a core during idle).
  6. Safely freezes runaway threads using the Win32 SuspendThread API (instead of terminating them).

Why SuspendThread is critical:

Earlier attempts at terminating threads via TerminateThread could cause intermittent crashes (Access Violation 0xc0000005 in ntdll.dll) because forcefully terminating a thread abruptly abandons internal critical sections and heap locks.

In contrast, suspending the thread simply halts its execution cycles: * CPU consumption instantly drops from 20%+ to ~0% idle and fans go silent immediately. * Internal memory structures, handles, and locks remain completely intact and stable — zero crash risk.


Before / After:

In testing on idle InDesign instances: * Before: 18% - 25% CPU (one full core pegged, fans spinning). * After: ~0.3% CPU (fans quiet, InDesign completely responsive).


Where to get it:

The utility is completely free and open source: * GitHub: GitHub — ID_Thread_Fix * Direct Download & Info: ph-cu-s.com/tools/id-thread-fix

It is a tiny standalone portable executable (328 KB) with zero dependencies. No installer or runtime setup needed. You can use it as a desktop shortcut replacement or run it with --fix-only to instantly tame an already-running, lagging InDesign instance.

Important note: This is a community workaround, not an official Adobe patch. Always save your work before testing new tools.


Feedback:

If you have been experiencing this runaway idle thread issue in InDesign, I would love to hear your feedback: * InDesign version * Windows version * CPU model * Whether the fix resolved the CPU load for you

Hopefully this saves your CPU temps and laptop battery until Adobe properly addresses the underlying background loop!


r/indesign 1d ago

Line break forces Full justification

4 Upvotes

Hi everyone, first time using Reddit. Does anyone know how to modify this behavior ? I'm trying to use the Line Break as a way to go down a line and skip the spacing post paragraph (which I obviously want to keep in general). When its on a big paragraph, the full justification isn't bad, but using it on single short sentence makes word spacing awful. I already tried changing the min, optimal and max word spacing but it didn't do a thing. Basically I want to make an exception on Line Break character regarding justification.

What I want (but here I changed the spacing between the lines) :

What I have
What I want (but here I changed the spacing between the lines)

Many thanks in advance.


r/indesign 1d ago

Help Triple click select issue

8 Upvotes

Is there a way to prevent triple click select from selecting the newline character at the end of paragraphs? This little evil anti-feature is causing me so much grief...


r/indesign 1d ago

Help InDesign Links Keep Breaking When Shared Between Team Members Using iCloud Drive

3 Upvotes

Hey everyone, I'm running into a frustrating issue with InDesign where linked images keep breaking whenever my teammate and I open the same file. Looking for advice on the best workflow fix.

The Setup

We're working on a project and sharing InDesign files through iCloud Drive. The file structure looks like this:

JOHN WILLIAM WATERHOUSE/

├── john william waterhouse.indd

├── john william waterhouse 2.indd

└── Links/

└── a mermaid-300dpi.jpg

The Problem

When I (Anders) open the file, the linked images are pointing to:

/Users/anders/Desktop/ICLOUD 2/iCloudDrive/POSTERSHOPEN/PICK-A-POSTER/KATEGORIER/KONSTNÄRER/JOHN WILLIAM WATERHOUSE/Links/a mermaid-300dpi.jpg

When my teammate Anna opens the same file, InDesign automatically re-links to her path:

/Users/anna/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/POSTERSHOPEN/PICK-A-POSTER/KATEGORIER/KONSTNÄRER/JOHN WILLIAM WATERHOUSE/Links/a mermaid-300dpi.jpg

So every time I open it after her (or vice versa), the links break and I have to relink all the images. Why does this happen, and can it be solved somehow? I should mention that I use a PC and my colleague is on a Mac. Does that have anything to do with it? But even if it does, maybe there's still a fix?


r/indesign 2d ago

Incredibly slow

4 Upvotes

Hi,

I'm working on a document (mostly based on multiple short tables) that I had created on a Mac mini Quad-Core 2012. I'm now using the latest ID on a Mac mini M4 Pro.

Even scrolling is abysmally slow. So slow, that it doesn't even stop when I stop tapping on the Page Up/Down key, but continues with whatever it might have in the buffer.

I can't believe this is really happening. Has this thing been abandoned, and being just used as a pin cushion for their intrusive AI?


r/indesign 2d ago

InDesign Suddenly Printing Colors Completely Out of Whack

9 Upvotes

PROBLEM: Small print shop I work at is suddenly experiencing MAJOR, extreme color shifts when I print to our Ricoh color copier. Been running jobs with the same setup and saved settings for years and never had any issues. No settings have been changed and have all been double checked. Older jobs that we've stored in the copier print fine so I know it's nothing to do with the copier Mechanically.

Trouble started a few weeks ago trying to print a one color document that we run all the time. I'll open it, make a minor text change and run it. Again, older stored versions look fine. This time, however, one line of text (reflex blue) prints WAY too light, as if the opacity was set to 70%. File is a B&W tiff/scan colored blue with text over it. Creating outlines on the text "solved" it for some reason. CMYK process values exactly the same. Overprint preview is legit. Ran it with both spot and process Blue color swatch

The other day, we got an 8 page, 4 color pdf file that looks fine, exports to pdf fine, looks good in "separations preview" and pre-flights OK but prints out like the Ricoh is on LSD. I don't have an image of it but imagine bright yellow skin tones, washed out black areas and major color shifts everywhere. AGAIN, it kinda looks like INDD is printing files at 50% transparency in some spots but not entirely.

Updated my printer drivers, trashed my INDD preferences, double checked color profiles and transparency blend space, rasterized the pages and printed from PhotoShop, printed from pdf and checked the settings on the Ricoh (which we've never messed with) for anything weird. Printed it at home on my shitty color printer and it doesn't look great but it's not completely off the rails and psychotic looking either, so this is almost certainly a front end communication problem somewhere between INDD and the Ricoh, and it needs fixing. We open, modify and then run jobs all the time so of course this is a very bad situation. It's a small shop and the owner is an older guy with no clue.

Any ideas about what's going on here? It's an older MAC and an older version of Creative Cloud but we've never had any issues before and they're simple as hell jobs we're talking about here. Real basic stuff.


r/indesign 2d ago

Update: The Excel → InDesign table converter I shared here is now finished

9 Upvotes

A while ago, I shared an early version of ETIC here and asked for feedback about the idea of converting formatted Excel tables directly into editable InDesign IDML.

At the time, the UI was only available in Japanese.

I received some interesting feedback and questions here — especially about InDesign styles, how Excel is used as source material, and where a tool like this might fit into an actual production workflow.

I've continued working on it since then, and the first release is now finished, including the English version.

ETIC converts formatted Excel tables into editable IDML while preserving things like fonts, font sizes, colors, borders, merged cells, alignment, rotation, and table dimensions.

The basic idea hasn't changed: rather than rebuilding a table in InDesign, ETIC treats the formatted Excel table as the source and generates an editable InDesign table from it.

I'm still very interested in hearing how people here handle Excel tables in real production work — particularly where this approach would or wouldn't fit into your workflow.

If anyone wants to try it with their own Excel files, a 10-day free trial is available as well.

Here's the current version:

ETIC website


r/indesign 3d ago

Help Table of Contents Help

Thumbnail
gallery
8 Upvotes

Hey designers! I am having a heck of a time with the Table of Contents for the poetry anthology I am working on and would appreciate some advice. I've tried looking it up, but it's not really telling me much about how to really customize the TOC in the way that I want it to look; just how to create it, add tabs so the page number is on the right, and adding leading dots from the words to the page number.

The first spread is how I want it to look, with

Poem Title | pg# | Artist Name,

but currently it wouldn't be e-pub friendly (as it doesn't link to things). Obviously "PG" would be replaced with the respective page number that poem would be found on.

When I do the normal steps for creating a Table of Contents to make it e-pub friendly, the second spread posted is what it ends up looking like. Which is 1. What I don't want it to look like, design-wise and 2. Why are the first and second Section Titles "Poems About Resilience and Hope" and ".....Isolation and Loneliness" an ok size, but the others are giant? They have the same settings, same Paragraph and Character Styles..... Also, I wouldn't want the page numbers after the poem title AND artist, just after one.

Is there a way I can just link the pages from the TOC design I like with their respective pages? Or do I have to create a TOC using the Layout > Table of Contents... Or should I just create different files for print publication and e-pub?

Thank you in advance for your help, as this is tricky and frustrating me to no end. I am fairly versed in the basics of InDesign, but I'm new to the more nuanced things like this.


r/indesign 3d ago

Help Figma native PDF export results in uneditable "Type 3" fonts. Why is this so resistant to standard PDF editors?

0 Upvotes

I don’t necessarily need a solution to this anymore, but I would love to get a proper technical explanation, and I’m curious to hear your thoughts.

Here is what happened: I imported PDF files into Figma using a plugin. Inside Figma, I was able to edit the layout (placing circles, fixing some text, and even adjusting the contrast and color of the final mockup). When I was done, I exported the file to PDF using Figma’s native export feature, not the plugin's export function.

I didn’t expect any issues, but the resulting PDF threw errors in various programs due to "Type 3" fonts.

I’m genuinely curious: why are Type 3 fonts considered so problematic or "legacy"? I understand that in this context, the characters are essentially rendered as graphic shapes or vector outlines rather than standard font glyphs. But theoretically, shouldn’t the text still be somewhat editable?

The weird part is that I tried multiple programs, and none of them can properly handle this file, even though it’s a standard PDF. When I opened it in WPS Office, the font completely broke and turned into random, garbled symbols.

Currently, I’m using PDF-XChange Editor (which is a pretty powerful tool). It can actually highlight and select the text blocks, but it cannot edit the existing text. It only allows me to type new text over the existing text, which just results in a smudged, overlapping mess.

Has anyone else experienced this? Why does Figma’s native PDF export handle text this way, and why is it so resistant to standard PDF editing tools? Any insights into the technical "why" behind this would be greatly appreciated!


r/indesign 4d ago

Help Setting up adjustable calendar dates

Post image
25 Upvotes

trying to set up an adjustable calendar. used centered tabs to space out the dates and keep them centered in columns,
But!
i cant get the first column to play along, making it not left aligned doesnt fix it, and also makes 31 run away from 30

anyone have an idea for how to get first column to center align.. or conceptually, how to center align the first "word" of each line of text


r/indesign 4d ago

Anchored inline images and text flow

Post image
9 Upvotes

I regularly make these attendee booklets for events hosted by my company. Each of these is set up as separate text boxes with an accompanying image frame for the attendee's headshot—not ideal, i know. I'd like to recreate all of this as a single text flow linked over several pages. We list guests alphabetically and, if a guest drops out, I've got to remove them and manually shift everyone up and over. Maddening.

I know I can anchor images in a text flow but the settings aren't always intuitive to me, especially when I want multiple lines of text—vertically center aligned—next to the images. I know I could group these blocks and paste them into a text flow, but I've noticed glitches that occur whenever I have to delete a block in the flow.

And is there a way I could set this up to automatically switch left and right paragraph alignment throughout if I delete someone in the flow, since the design alternates back and forth? That's another head scratcher for me.

Thanks in advance!


r/indesign 4d ago

Copy and Paste Layer

4 Upvotes

Hi! I’m trying to figure out how to add a layer to my design that has text that’s frequently copy and pasted and changed, but doesn’t show up when printing or saving a design. I work at a restaurant so we are constantly changing menu items and reusing some, so it would be useful to have a sort of list of previous items that can be substituted when needed.


r/indesign 4d ago

Help Adobe PDF PPD missing

2 Upvotes

i’m trying to find the Adobe PDF PPD to download but i can’t seem to find it and it keeps bringing me to that one article on “Page and layout options unavailable” and the instructions for the Adobe PDF PPD don’t make sense to me. like what do you mean copy the the Adobe PDF PPD ? where is that file ? am i missing someone ?


r/indesign 4d ago

Solved Saving folded brochure for home printer

6 Upvotes

My client wants to print a brochure folded once in the middle (folding an A4 page to make an A5 "booklet"). I made four pages, facing pages. How do I save it in a way that I can print it on her home printer correctly?

My googling skills must be lacking, because I'm unable to find how to do it.


r/indesign 4d ago

Help First-line indentation: when should it be used?

6 Upvotes
Example

I was watching a tutorial where the guy suggested that first-line indentation should generally be used when there is no space between paragraphs. The idea was that the indentation helps the reader identify a new paragraph and follow the text more easily.

In my case, however, I usually add space between paragraphs, but my clients still insist on having first-line indentation as well.

I’ve also seen some books that use both paragraph spacing and first-line indentation, which made me question whether using both is actually considered bad practice or simply a matter of typographic style.

Is this generally considered good typographic practice? If there is already space between paragraphs, is there still a reason to use first-line indentation? And if it is generally unnecessary, how can I explain this to a client in a convincing way?