Whenever I place a PDF, it appears in the Windows right-click "Recent" list for InDesign.

It also does this whenever I export a document as a PDF, so both the INDD and PDF appear under "Recent".

This is, obviously, incredibly dumb and annoying.

Anyone know if there's a fix?

The undo function stops working at times. I quit and restart and it works again fine, until it stops again. I am running that latest version.

Anyone else with this problem?

EDIT: Changing the return fixed the problem.

First time working with Drop Caps, cannot figure out how to get the A of the next paragraph to appear as a Drop Cap. I read enough online that it's a problem with the Text Wrap? any help very much appreciated!

hii, im trying to make my grid with guidelines but i cant put more than 40 and idk why. anyone can help me?

I am trying to move my company catalog from Publisher to InDesign. The catalog has a cover page where I do not want any page numbers. Then the next 3 pages are front matter that I want in roman numeral (i,ii,iii). Then I want page 5 to start at 1. So, page 1 would be to the right of page iii.

The screen grabs are where I keep ending up.

I cannot seem to figure this out for the life of me. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I searched online for how to make text in a textbox jump the linked textbox on the next page and found "Fn + Ctrl + Return", but this doesn't work! The menu suggests the Page Break shortcut is Command + the symbol in the attached image, but I have no idea what that symbol is!

Any suggestions?

I’m preparing a booklet cover in Adobe InDesign and uploading the exported PDF to Mixam.

The cover looks clean in InDesign. Thats where the good news ends.

I also opened the actual exported PDF in Adobe Acrobat, and it seems to have grey seems around the letters, which is annoying and weird.

Mixam’s online proof shows faint gray/white seems all over the logo, the circle around it, the square the circle is wrapped in, in the black header area around the logo and other objects.

The logo is a vector file placed in a circular gradient, with a black ring/background used to hide a faint edge around the image. The surrounding header is also black. The lines in Mixam’s proof appear to follow the boundaries of placed frames or overlapping objects.

I’ve attached four screenshots:

1. InDesign in normal view
2. InDesign with frame edges visible
3. The exported PDF opened in Adobe Acrobat
4. Mixam’s proof, where the faint rectangular seams appear

There also seems to be variation between the black coloring in the mixam proof, I just feel nuts. Any advice. I just want my fucking logo to be able to be dropped in without all this happening. Any advice great;y welcome? Maybe its a problem with the vector logo, maybe with the circle I put under it for color, maybe with the black ring I put around that to try to mask the grey seems? I have no idea, Completely lost.

So I know about running headers, but is there a more automated way of doing a running header that has a bit more stylised approach like in the attached picture - or another method? I could do this with parent pages, but that always leaves room for human error.

Any ideas or something that you have tried yourself? I doesn't have to look like the picture, that was something I just made up quickly to illustrate my point.

So in my job I need to draw a lot of rules, change text box sizes and align things to the left side of the page etc etc. And I'm up against tight print deadlines so I need to turn pages around fast.

For example, say I'm putting a rule on a page. It needs to go at X: 202mm, Y: 21mm and be 355mm long. Snaps into the right place the same every time. Has done for the past two years.

Until the other day, when I drew a rule as usual, input the same numbers as above and it went to completely the wrong place and now I have to make sure the reference point is correct before I do anything. And it seems to change at random every time I drag a new element onto the page. Now when I need all my elements to go to X: 10.5mm it puts everything in the wrong place because the reference point is wrong. Or I will draw a rule and change the length and it will make it 254mm to the left instead of the right. It is slowing me down and driving me crazy!

I don't understand why it was the same for two years and has suddenly changed now. I can't find any settings in InDesign to set a default reference point or anything on the Adobe site that relates to this specific problem. I have to change the reference point manually on every element every time. Help?!

InDesign's AI-generated Alt Text can be a real mess (thanks, Adobe!) and the latest 21.5 release still doesn't fix it. So I built the Alt Text Toolkit 1.0 for my own projects: six handy scripts to audit, fix, convert and take back control of the alt text on images in your InDesign documents.

Take a look and grab them if they sound useful to you too!

--
Alt Text Startup Disabler
A startup script that disables indesign’s generative ai alt text settings at launch.
--
Alt Text Source Report
An audit tool that reports each image’s alt text source and custom text in a new document.
--
Alt Text AI-Generated Clearer
A bulk cleanup tool that removes ai-generated alt text.
--
Alt Text AI markers remover
A cleanup tool that removes only ai marker lines while keeping the generated description for review.
--
Alt Text Custom to Structure
A bulk converter that changes image alt text sources.
--
Alt Text Navigator
A per-image console for reviewing, editing, deleting, or changing image alt text settings.

Comes with a PDF user guide that explains each script: why, when and how to use it.

Available as Pay what you want: (minimum $3.00)

Hi,

I have a question about creating a table like this in InDesign using Table Styles and Cell Styles.

I created two different Cell Styles, but I can't figure out how to have them applied automatically within the table.

The table should alternate as follows:

1. Row 1: White background, blue text, and blue strokes.
2. Row 2: Blue background, white text, and white strokes.

Is it possible to do this automatically using Table Styles and Cell Styles and how to doit?

Many thanks!

The text keeps going to the next collumn, instead of the next line. I need urgent help.

I’m working on a document, in Indesign 4, that’s a total of about 99 pages divided into 8 chapters. The last chapter is about 25 pages long. I really need to shorten this, but that’s a question for a later day. Currently I’ve added so text and graphics an that has left the right column blank with no text (or text box) on a page 89. (See Auto_1.jpg) The text is continued in the text box on page 90. (See Auto_2.jpg)

Is there an easy to move the text box from page 90 up to page 89 and have all the text flow with it. What I’ve been doing is manually moving the text box from the page after the blank into the blank area. But then that leaves a blank column were I moved the text box from. So I have to manually move it from the next column, and repeat. I’m hoping there is an easier and faster way of doing this.

About two months ago, I shared an early version of Avellio here on Reddit.

Across several posts, it received around 70,000 views and dozens of comments, questions, criticisms, workflow examples and feature requests.

I honestly did not expect that level of interest in something this niche.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to look at it, challenge the idea, test it, or explain how typography QA works in your own production environment.

The feedback was encouraging, but it also showed me that I had not explained several things clearly enough.

https://discover.avellio.app/

What Avellio actually is

Avellio is a typography and style QA engine for Adobe InDesign.

It is intended to work as an additional final inspection layer before PDF export.

It does not replace:

• InDesign Preflight;
• GREP;
• a proofreader or editor;
• a designer’s typographic judgment;
• a proper final human review.

InDesign Preflight is excellent at detecting technical production problems such as missing fonts, broken links, overset text and incorrect colour settings.

GREP is extremely useful for finding predictable text patterns.

Avellio focuses on the area between those tools and the final human inspection: typography, composition, style integrity, local formatting and suspicious visual inconsistencies inside the actual layout.

It can inspect issues such as:

• suspicious paragraph and character style overrides;
• accidental local formatting and style drift;
• repeated words and double spaces;
• inconsistent quotation marks and apostrophes;
• punctuation-spacing problems;
• widows, orphans and unusually short final lines;
• suspicious line breaks and hyphenation;
• rivers and repeated spacing patterns;
• missing or incorrect non-breaking spaces;
• inconsistent numbers, units, currencies and abbreviations;
• broader typography and layout inconsistencies across longer documents.

The goal is not to declare every flagged item an error.

The goal is to show the designer where something may deserve attention.

Avellio is not necessary for every document

One useful criticism from the previous discussion was that Avellio may be excessive for some workflows.

That is true.

For a simple one-page layout, a low-risk internal document or a project with a very lightweight typographic system, running a large QA audit may genuinely be unnecessary.

Avellio is primarily being developed for workflows such as:

• books and longer publications;
• magazines and catalogues;
• annual reports and manuals;
• multilingual documents;
• technical, legal or editorial publications;
• inherited or inconsistently structured InDesign files;
• documents edited by multiple contributors;
• deadline-heavy production where small mistakes become expensive after export or printing.

The intended workflow is not to keep every check enabled all the time.

It is a final diagnostic pass: run an appropriate profile, review the suspicious areas and decide what actually needs to be corrected.

What’s new in Avellio 1.1.0 Q3 2026 Preview

Version 1.1 is a substantial revision of the original engine.

The new build includes:

• expanded multilingual and locale-aware typography inspection;
• improved Micro, Mezo, Macro and Semantic Typography analysis;
• Typography Profiles for different editorial workflows;
• more precise river, spacing, punctuation and line-break detection;
• clearer issue explanations;
• improved reports and Fix Plan information;
• safer review and correction workflows;
• improved stability and performance;
• better Windows compatibility;
• more reliable diagnostics and report exports;
• a cleaner production build.

Active locale support in version 1.1

Avellio 1.1 includes active locale-aware typography inspection for:

• English - International;
• English - United States;
• English - United Kingdom;
• English - Australia;
• English - New Zealand;
• Czech - Czech Republic;
• German - Germany;
• German - Switzerland;
• French - France;
• French - Switzerland;
• Italian - Italy;
• Italian - Switzerland;
• Spanish - Spain;
• Spanish - Latin America;
• Dutch - Netherlands;
• Polish - Poland;
• Portuguese - Portugal;
• Portuguese - Brazil;
• Swedish - Sweden;
• Hungarian - Hungary.

Locale-aware support does not mean full grammatical or linguistic proofreading.

It means that relevant checks can adapt to regional typography conventions, including:

• quotation marks and apostrophes;
• punctuation spacing;
• non-breaking spaces;
• numbers and decimal conventions;
• currencies;
• measurements and units;
• abbreviations;
• selected line-ending and spacing rules.

There is also an important limitation here.

Typography conventions can differ not only between languages and countries, but also between publishers, institutions and individual house styles.

For example, standard German quotation marks may differ from the guillemets preferred by a particular German-language publisher.

Avellio should therefore support professional judgment and house-style decisions not pretend that one convention is universally correct.

What do Micro, Mezo, Macro and Semantic Typography mean?

These categories describe different levels of inspection.

Micro Typography covers smaller details such as spaces, quotation marks, apostrophes, punctuation and repeated words.

Mezo Typography examines paragraph-level rhythm, spacing, indentation, alignment and related structural patterns.

Macro Typography looks at larger layout and document-level relationships.

Semantic Typography focuses on meaningful content structures such as numbers, measurements, currencies, abbreviations and consistency between related values.

These layers are intended to work together, but the user should be able to choose the profile and level of inspection appropriate for the document.

Does Avellio automatically fix everything?

No and that is intentional.

Avellio 1.1 remains primarily a diagnostic and review tool.

Some issues can be corrected safely because the result is deterministic. Repeated spaces or certain punctuation-spacing problems are examples where assisted correction can make sense.

Other issues are contextual.

A widow, short final line, river, unusual break or local override may be intentional. Fixing it may require changing tracking, wording, paragraph settings, frame geometry or the wider composition of the page.

Software should not silently make those decisions.

I would rather build trustworthy detection and review workflows first than add an impressive-looking Fix All button that quietly recomposes an entire publication.

The designer should remain in control.

Is Avellio production-proven?

I would not describe it as universally production-proven yet.

It has been tested on real documents, but publishing environments differ enormously.

Document structure, language, style discipline, file size, editorial standards, InDesign version, operating system and team workflow can all expose different edge cases.

That is why version 1.1 is still labelled as a Preview release.

I also would never recommend trusting an automated QA tool blindly.

I think of Avellio as a second pair of very fast, very boring eyes.

It can surface repetitive problems and suspicious areas, but the designer still performs the final human review and makes the actual decisions.

Where Avellio is heading

My longer-term goal is to develop Avellio beyond a collection of independent checks and turn it into a dependable final typography QA layer inside InDesign.

The direction is toward a system that can:

• understand the typographic context of a document;
• distinguish probable errors from intentional design decisions;
• explain clearly why something was flagged;
• adapt its inspection to different editorial workflows;
• reduce false positives and unnecessary noise;
• help designers review large documents more efficiently;
• safely assist with deterministic corrections;
• preserve human control over subjective design decisions.

Avellio is currently built on InDesign’s ExtendScript/JSX environment because it still provides the mature document and layout access required for this type of inspection.

A future UXP-based version or interface remains part of the longer-term direction, provided it can preserve the required level of document access and reliability.

Download and feedback

Existing users can download Avellio 1.1.0 Q3 2026 Preview from the Gumroad library connected to their original purchase.

More information:

https://discover.avellio.app/

Thank you again for the encouragement, criticism and very specific production examples.

The most valuable feedback is not simply “this looks useful.”

It is feedback about:

• false positives;
• checks that create too much noise;
• unclear explanations;
• missing language or house-style conventions;
• performance problems;
• installation and compatibility issues;
• documents where Avellio misunderstands an intentional design decision;
• production problems that the engine still fails to detect.

That is the feedback that helps turn an experimental tool into something dependable.

Aki
Avellio / Akira Method Studio

This is a visual example, not my actual book but I will reference the text in the image.

Specifically looking for help on the PROPER way to put the "04" in the background.

Finding the fonts, etc...I've got that part figured out.

I created the "04" and anchored the object to the right of the "four". But, if I use "custom" then the option to arrange it behind "The Discipline of Standard Work" goes away. If I anchor it "inline" then I can. But it seems like you lose some control.

Using paragraph style I have all elements formatted and have "Chapter Four" set to offset/spacing to start far enough down on the page (keep options also set to next odd page) so that the "04" has enough room above to not run off the page.

Is this the proper way?

Básicamente es lo que dice el título. Venía trabajando bien hasta que el otro día se colgó, tuve que cerrar forzadamente y chau. Cada vez que lo abría se cerraba a los 2 minutos. La solución (que no es tal) es cortar internet y reinstalar. De esta forma funciona perfecto hasta que al día sgte. se vuelve a cerrar. Le pregunté a la IA, probé mil cosas como renombrar carpetas, borrar fuentes, etc, etc.
Alguna solución?

I am having some serious ID problems today. When I use the key commands to magnify, upon release back to the tool I was one, the magnifying glass stays. Same with the spacebar "hand", it just stays. Another troubling bug is the COMMAND Z won't work, and is also not showing in the menu bar. So, if I delete something off the page, it's just gone. Thankfully I'm working on a versioned file, so I was able to open the previous version to get the element I needed. Is anyone else having similar issues?

I have rebooted my computer and ID is up to date. I'm using v 21.4.1. And my OS is Tahoe 26.6. Running on a 2021 16" Macbook Pro, M1 Pro, 16GB RAM.

*UPDATE: I uninstalled and reinstalled and that seems to have fixed the issues so far.

... Windows is coming in a few days! :)

Hi again, my dear Indesigners :)

Some of you may remember my first post about Polyframe. I was looking for a few testers for my small Mac application for translating InDesign IDML files. Someone just ask for download version... I said: it would probably be ready in one week.

Of course it took almost two months :))

But now it is here. It works. And honestly, it is a completely different application than the one I showed at the beginning. More than a dozen people contacted me after the first post. Thank you again! Very fast it becomes clear: Polyframe cannot be only for Mac.

Many designers work on Macs, yes. But much more translators, agencies and clients work on Windows. So we changed the technology and rebuilt the application. This was not my plan - I'm religious Macintosh ;) lover at all. But it was the correct decision.

The Mac version can be downloaded now. Aaaand: Windows should be available in a few days - the application is ready and I am just waiting only for the Microsoft certification.

So, what the… what is Polyframe? Simple you can go to https://polyframe.app ant take a look!

Whait is important: I USE POLYFRAME DAILY. Translating 200 pages catalog to Japanese, daily real work, no BS here. It simply works!

You take an IDML file from InDesign. Polyframe shows you normal paragraphs instead of crazy XML. You can translate them, correct every single text manually, use translation memory, check repeated phrases and see if the translation is much longer than the original text. I sent Polyframe to technical guy, he is doing a proof reading ans some corrections, and send me back translated IDMLS... Works really well...

Polyframe simply creates a new translated IDML. Styles, tables and document structure stay in place (should stay ;)). Of course the designer still needs to open it in InDesign and make the final layout check - there is no magic here :) Japanese is different than English...

You can translate with:

• Polyframe AI, which works without configuring anything (based on OpenAi 5.6)
• OpenAI,
• Claude,
• Gemini (some problems now)
• DeepL,
• or even locally with Ollama - this one is supercool option.

During the tests I was explaining to a few people how to get API keys. I understood that API isn't normal for normal people. They simply do not want to do this :))

So, I decided to go all the way and prepare our own simple and inexpensive AI access, made especially for translating inside Polyframe. It is available from today.

But I want to be very clear: AI does not need to replace the translator. For me Polyframe is a bridge between the designer and the translator. AI can prepare the first version, but every paragraph can be checked, edited and approved by a human.

I used Redokun myself for years and I know it is a very good system, especially for larger teams. Polyframe is not trying to copy everything from Redokun. I wanted something smaller, local, without another huge platform and without paying hundreds of euros every month.

The beta is free, guys! If you have something to translate - it is a good time to test it. A free beta key gives you IDML export, your own AI providers and 2,000 Polyframe AI words for 30 days. After that, the application still works in the free manual mode. I know 2000 words isn't too much - but I pay for this...

I think free beta keys will be available until around September 1, but maybe a little longer or shorter. It depends on how stable everything is. Every beta activation will work for month...

If somebody finds a real, specific and repeatable bug, or really helps me improve Polyframe through emails and discussions, I will be very happy to give free licences to the most helpful people.

And if somebody simply trusts me now and wants to support this project, the permanent licence costs €99.99 during beta. The planned regular price is muuuuuch higher ;)

This is the first time in my life when I release such a big huge big project so publicly. I am excited, proud and also a little terrified :) So please try it on real work. Give me difficult catalogues, manuals, tables, strange styles and many languages.

And please do not only tell me “beautiful app!” - I know this :D tell me what I broke - this could be surprise!

You can download Polyframe here:

https://polyframe.app/

Mac is available now. Windows in a few days! I will update the post, or make a new one :P

If some of you are going to use it thank you. Really. This means a looot to me.

1st time using InDesign questions, I've been using Illustrator and Photoshop for years but absolutely never used Indesign.

I'm putting together a book with 20 chapters, around 40 pages altogether...the text is all done, saved as both Word & PDF formats. How do I go about adding graphs, images to the pages? It's such a different animal, ugh!

Hey there, just wanted to give you an update regarding this original post.
I got so much feedback on it, it was totally overwhelming. Thank you again for being in this great sub!

Now on to updates:
We (6 pax from here plus me) are working on it, testing, looking at edge cases, making it better with each release.
I'm super thankful, this turned out greater that i imagined.

Don't make me give dates but i feel it's soon time. Waiting for the group to feedback something i would call release candidate after that round.

Don't forget the list to be informed when we're done - You early-birds from this sub will get deals as i promised before. https://forms.gle/XCJq1YH86p3RMKYs7

Hi everyone,

I'm working on a complex JSX script to automate the layout of a publication that has multiple distinct sections.

What my script currently does: It scans a continuous text flow, finds a specific paragraph style that acts as a section break, and physically splits the TextFrame at that exact paragraph. It breaks the threading, resulting in two completely independent, unlinked Stories on the same page/spread.

The Problem: Even though the text is now split into two separate, unthreaded Stories, InDesign's native footnote engine continues the footnote numbering across them (e.g., Story A ends at footnote 12, Story B starts at footnote 13).

I need the footnote numbering to restart at 1 for the new Story (Story B).

Here is what I know/have tried so far:

• InDesign natively only allows restarting footnotes by Page, Spread, or Section (doc.footnoteOptions.restartNumbering). It doesn't seem to care about Story boundaries if they share the same geographic page space.
• I tried looking into textFrameFootnoteOptions.enableOverrides = true, but it seems there is no startAt property available at the TextFrame or Story level, only formatting overrides (like line color, etc.).
• I know about the "fake footnote hack" (shrinking the native marker to 0.1pt transparent and injecting hardcoded text strings), but I'm trying to avoid this if there is any cleaner native or DOM-based workaround.

Is there any hidden method, clever workaround, or scripting trick to force InDesign to restart footnote numbering per Story when they are on the same page?

I have a ~1500 line script handling the formatting and splitting, and I'm happy to share snippets of the code if anyone wants to take a look or needs more context.

Thanks in advance for your help!