How do I get InDesign CS5 to stop changing my font to Minion Pro?

Question

With no document open, the font says Times New Roman, so that should be the default. However, pasting text into a text box from another program like Open Office Writer and then adding a carriage return (normal Enter, not Shift+Enter) causes the font to suddenly change to Minion Pro, so anything I type or paste in at that point is in Minion Pro. I'm getting tired of constantly opting out of InDesign's favorite font. What do I have to do to get InDesign CS5 to accept that I use Times New Roman and not Minion Pro?

Answer 1

Let's see if we can explain this better...
Here's what I think is happening based on what I've been able to do here to reproduce this.
First, in the Clipboard Handling prefs the setting is to paste text only, not All Information. The TNR setting is a local override to Basic Paragraph which has been set as the default in the character panel or control panel, but [BP] itself is still set to Minion Pro.
You can type all day in ID with settings like this and not have the font change to Minion Pro, so it is tied to the paste settings. I think what is happening is that ID must ignore any formatting in the copied text in order to make the pasted text match what is set at the cursor position and for some reason resets the default text attributes to the paragraph style definition, so when you press enter your local override default is gone, but only for that frame. I believe this is actually using the Paste Without Formatting command.
It doesn't seem to matter if you continue to type in the same paragraph, the next one loses the override. You can make this happen using the Paste Without Formatting command after copying text you type with your default settings as an override, as well, even if the format of the copied text is already exactly the same because you typed it in the same paragraph. The trigger for this though, is the position in your text where you paste -- it only happens when you paste at the end of the existing text in your story.
I'm not sure if this is a bug or intended behavior, though I'm leaning towards the latter as it makes some logical sense to me. Paragraph formatting for the next paragraph is picked up from the last character when you press enter as you type at the end of a story, whereas if you type on the end of an exisiting paragraph in the middle someplace, the break at the end of that paragraph is already formatted.
Bottom line, I think the only way to make your workflow work is to make a default paragraph style with your TNR formatting eihter by editing [BP] or making a new one. I'm not sure why you didn't have success with a new style. Did you create the new style with nothing open? Did you set the formatting to be TNR? Did you also be sure to highlight this style with nothing open so that it was set to be the default?