InDesign erroneously applies character style to imported text

For a year, I had been importing text into InDesign with little trouble until this problem starting happening and I can't figure out why.
Let's say I have a CS3 file with defined character and paragraph styles.
If I draw an empty text box, InDesign shows the character style "superscript" and paragraph style "ext_all" are applied. I can select "Break Link to Style," but if I import text into that box, the "superscript" character style is applied.
The following happens whether I create a text box first or not:
If I import a styled Word file, all the text comes in styled "superscript" until it reaches a Word character style.
If I import an InDesign Tagged Text file, all the text comes in styled "superscript" until it reaches a character tag.
If I import a very simple one sentence rtf file, all the text is styled "superscript."
Anyone run into this? I've tried googling, but can't find a discussion about it. Thanks in advance!

Perhaps you've inadvertently set those styles as the defaults? That would happen if you click on them with nothing selected. For the current document switch to the text tool and make sure there is no cursor active or text frame selected, then check to see that the character style is set to [None] and the paragraph style to what you would like to be your default. Also check the settings in the character and paragraph panels.
To make sure this doesn't carry forward into any more new documents, if indeed that was the problem, close all documents and repeat the above steps. With no documents open your selections will become the defaults for all new work until changed.
Peter

Similar Messages

InDesign crash while applying character style

Hi all,
A)I have problem with applying character style to selected text.
when character style is applied to selected text indesign get crashes.
my code snippet is as follow
input parameters
1.RangeData paraRange // start and end index of paragraph
2.storyUIDRef // uidref of current story
 code snippet
 // valid text model
 InterfacePtr<ITextModel> textModel(storyUIDRef, UseDefaultIID());
 if (!textModel)
 break;
 //wax strand
 InterfacePtr<IWaxStrand> waxStrand(((IWaxStrand*)textModel->QueryStrand(kFrameListBoss, IID_IWAXSTRAND)));
 if (waxStrand == nil)
 break;
 //WaxIterator
 K2::scoped_ptr<IWaxIterator> waxIterator(waxStrand->NewWaxIterator());
 if (waxIterator == nil)
 break;
 //first wax line of paragraph
 IWaxLine* waxLine = waxIterator->GetFirstWaxLine(paraRange.Start(nil));
 //iterate each waxline
 while (waxLine != nil && (waxLine->TextOrigin() < paraRange.End()))
 //Iterate for all runs
 K2::scoped_ptr<IWaxRunIterator> waxRunIter( waxLine->QueryWaxRunIterator() ) ;
 IWaxRun * waxRun = waxRunIter->GetFirstRun();
 while (waxRun)
 int32 startPos = waxRun->TextOrigin();
 int32 endPos = startPos + waxRun->GetCharCount();
 RangeData textRange(startPos ,endPos);
 ISelectionManager* selMgr = m_activeContext->GetContextSelection();
 if(!selMgr)
 break;
 //get valid textselection suite
InterfacePtr<ITextSelectionSuite> suite(selMgr, UseDefaultIID());
 if (!suite)
 break;
 //select text
suite->SetTextSelection(storyRef, textRange, Selection::kScrollIntoView, nil);
 //created style from selection using " SnpManipulate::TextStyleCreateStyleFromSelection" method.
my code get crashed at highlighted text( int32 startPos = waxRun->TextOrigin();).
B)my next question is how to get textstyle ranges of a selected paragraph.
please help me.
Thanks
Tahir

A) Make sure that the all parcels of the text is composed before you iterate it, see ITextParcelListComposer. I don't quite understand what you are trying to achieve. You want to apply a character style to a range of text, but the code iterates wax lines and iterate the runs of each line and sets the current selection to be the run on each iteration. Why not just:
InterfacePtr<ICommand> icmd(textmodelCmds->ApplyStyleCmd(index, length,styleUID,kCharAttrStrandBoss,kFalse));
B) Walk the kCharAttrStrands to the get information:
InterfacePtr<IStrand> strand((IStrand*)textmodel->QueryStrand(kCharAttrStrandBoss,IStrand::kDefaultIID));
then call stand->GetRunLength() a number of times until, you are through the selected part of the text / paragraph

How do I apply a specific character style to specific text?

Long-time Photoshop and Illustrator user. New to Indesign.
Fortunately, this isn't an issue of how to go about creating fractions. I've already chosen a route for that. I'm simply applying a Character Style that checks the opentype "fractions" box.
Here's an example of the content I'm dealing with:
Above is my styled table in Indesign, after pasting in data I'm being given data in excel spreadsheets.
How might I quickly apply my "ptable_BODY FRACTIONS" style to only certain text, like: "1/2" + "1/4" + "1/8" & preferably random arbitrary fractions like "34/69"?
GREP can do some great things, but can it selectively apply character styles?
This might be a job for a paragraph style. I'm not sure. . .

@ John
That's exactly what the GREP Styles feature does. Arriving at a GREP expression that accurately targets your fractions may be another matter considering your screen shot shows your content to have no space between whole numbers and fractions.
Right. It keeps including the whole number preceding the fraction.
I'm dead set on there not being a space between the whole number and fraction, too.
I'm trying to figure out how to tell Indesign to take all fractions and give them opentype fractions settings.
I'll only be dealing with standard fractions I'm hoping, so arbitrary fractions shouldn't be necessary.
Just halves, quarters, eighths, and sixteenths should be ok. These are likely the only fractions I'll ever need to deal with: 1/2, 1/4, 3/4, 1/8, 3/8, 5/8, 7/8, 1/16, 3/16, 5/16, 7/16, 9/16, 11/16, 13/16, 15/16.

Applescript-Apply Character Style to Select Words in InDesign CC

I'm trying to apply a character style to the first several words of a paragraph. The number of words varies, but it is essentially every word before a comma.
Here's what I have so far:
tell application "Adobe InDesign CC 2014"
tell document 1
tell page 2
tell (item 1 of page items whose label is "HabitsContent")
tell paragraph 2
repeat with i from 1 to count of characters
if contents of character i = "," then
exit repeat
end if
end repeat
set applied character style of characters 1 thru i to "Italic"
end tell
end tell
end tell
end tell
end tell
Viewing the log of the script, it finds the comma; however, the script ends up italicizing the entire paragraph. Any ideas?

For anyone else who has a similar question, here's what works:
tell application "Adobe InDesign CC 2014"
tell paragraph 2 of (item 1 of page items whose label is "HabitsContent") of page 2 of document 1
set a to paragraph 1 as list
set a to text item 1 of a
set old to AppleScript's text item delimiters
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {","}
set font style of characters 1 thru (count of text item 1 of a) to "Italic"
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to old
end tell
end tell

How to handle paragraph styles in imported text with no tagged paragraph styles

Hi
Im currently trying to import a file (word file / excel I have both formats) into an indesign book and formatting the text automatically!
My question is: How is it possible to reflow text into frames and when changing frame it changes paragraph?
Or how is it possible to change paragraph style when forcing a line break when using text reflow?
I have already figured out how to reflow the text, and actually also managed to relow text into the frames and change paragraph style. I know how to use the keep option, and by this change the paragraph style when e.g. changing frame break/page break etc. (but if the content being flowed-in is not tagged with style names then I cannot figure out how to do it) The document and its content I whish to import do not have any tagged paragraphs!
Then I tried to look into "object styles" and format a text frame on a master page with an object style, and by using a "dilimiter character" forcing the text to start in a new frame when bringing the frame into live on a page. But here I cannot make the "text frame/object style" to apply or to work.
If any of you have a hint, I would be more than happy to hear from you
This picture are illustrating the outcome I would to get to....

If the incoming text does not have styles, or has only one style, there is really not much you can do other than assign styles after the import. If there are recognizable patterns in the formatting, a lot of that can be done with Find/Change, and there are a few scripts floating around that can help automate some of that.
Also, if your styles have a a good "next style" heirarchy built in, you can select large blocks of text (up to the point where applying next style would be incorrect), then right click the style name in the paragraph styles panel and choose apply style and next style (remove overrides). Warning. Removing overrides will remove any locally applied formatting like bold or italics, so local formatting should be converted to character styles first. Applied character styles are not overrides and will be preserved.

Getting ALL applied Character Styles in a paragraph

I'm trying to get all applied Character Styles of a paragraph in a InDesign CS2 Document.
With myParagraph.appliedCharacterStyle I just get the first but not all applied Charcter Styles.
Is there a possibility to get them?
greets
st

If they're applied directly and not by nested style, then you should examine the appliedCharacterStyle of each TextStyleRange in the paragraph.
If they're applied by nested style, you have to do a lot more work.
Dave

Finding MANUALLY applied character styles

Hi all,
We're in the process of switching to an XML workflow, and as one of our interim steps we're applying tags to paragraph and character styles in some of our documents. I'm aware of the option to map styles to tags and this should work well for paragraph styles. However, we're looking for a way to only map the character styles that have been manually applied.
As an example, we have a paragraph style for instructions that has a bold number nested at the beginning of each paragraph. In other places, the same character style may be used to bold a specific word, but it is applied manually. Is it possible to map to tags ONLY the character styles that were applied manually? We do not want tags identifying character styles that were applied via Nested Styles or GREP Styles.
I am assuming this would take some sort of script, which is why I'm posting in the scripting forum. Does anyone know if this is possible?
Thanks in advance,
Matthew

Another InDesign oddity!
If you fill a frame full of placeholder text and assign a "Bold" character style to, for example, a Nested Style:1 word, and a GREP style \<\w{4,6}\>, then use regular (or GREP) Find Text to search for the character style, it'll only highlight words that are at the start of the paragraph. Now that is wrong, wrong, wrong, because
(a) it should not find any of them -- if you click your cursor into one of these bolded words, the Character Style panel says it's [None].
or
(b) it should find all of them, not just those that happen to be at the start of a paragraph. (BTW -- it's not the Nested Style it picks up; when using only GREP styles it'll also find words-at-the-start).
It is funny, if things like this tickle you, that in a script "findText" works exactly the same. However: if you 'found' bold text and then interrogate what character style it has applied, it will only return your "bold" style if it was applied manually.
See this script -- test with a placeholder text, aforementioned Nested/GREP styles, and a few hand-picked words that you applied "bold" to yourself. It will only report the ones you marked.
app.findTextPreferences = null;
app.findTextPreferences.appliedCharacterStyle = "bold";
list = app.activeDocument.findText();
r = [];
while (list.length)
 next = list.pop();
 if (next.appliedCharacterStyle == app.activeDocument.characterStyles.item("bold"))
 r.push (next.contents);
alert (r.join("\r"));

Conditional build tags with character styles and ignored text

RoboHelp HTML v8.0.2.208
Windows XP Professional Version 2002 Service Pack 3 with 2 GB of RAM
Output: WebHelp and HTML Help
I have recently moved my projects from RH HTML X5 to RH HTML 8 and this is when the following problem appeared. I use lots of conditional build tags within the help projects. Some of these tags are for my own use for reference and I combine these with character styles containing a coloured background (highlight) so that they show up in the WebHelp or HTML Help output (e.g. text to identify the software version that the field/feature/text was added, reminders to check details, insertion of bug ID numbers, design document names, etc.). These areas of text are stripped out of the final build for customers by using a conditional build expression.
What I have noticed is that if a paragraph contains text with a conditional build tag applied AND that tagged text has a character style applied AND an unknown word within the conditional build tag is ignored (with the HTML tag <?rh-ignored text="word_to_be_ignored" ?>), saving the topic, closing it, then re-opening it shows that the conditional build text has stretched to the next conditional build tag, or to the end of the topic if there aren’t any other conditional build tags. This also happens by switching from Design View to HTML View. Note that this doesn’t happen if Ignore All is applied to the unknown word.
This doesn’t just apply to projects converted from RH X5. I created a new test project in RH8 and the same behaviour was observed. Similar behaviour occurred very occasionally in RH X5 but that seemed to be down to HTML tags being nested incorrectly.
The largest project contains around 1200 topics and with many hundreds of conditional build text areas this now causes a problem. I’ll probably have to locate every ignored word in an area of conditional text within each project, set it to Ignore All and then manually remove and re-apply the conditional build tags, unless someone can come up with something clever. Can anyone else replicate this and should it be logged as a bug?

Hi Daggins,
Thanks - that is good info to have. But as we all agree, that does take away from the point of single-sourcing.
You aren't misunderstsanding exactly... I am doing all my conditional tagging in FM and it works like a charm in terms of the PDFs that I generate from FM, and even the conditionally tagged text in RH shows/hides correctly. The issue is I am also importing my index and TOC from FM... and even if I have an entire file in FM tagged as conditional (all the text is tagged as conditional, I don't know if you can tag a file as conditional), the file name as a heading it still appears in the RH TOC. There is no text... but in my view it shouldn't appear in the TOC either (it looks like just a broken link when I generate my online help) - this is not ideal.

How to write script to apply character style?

Hi,
I'm on a Macbook pro and without a number pad so I can't assign a shortcut for the character styles. I did hear of a roundabout solution where you can assign a shortcut to a script which applies the character styles. Can anyone write this script?
My character style is called 'Features bold'.
I'm new to scripting, sorry if this is a dumb question.
Cheers

Hi,
1. Save this code as .jsx file inside your Script Panel folder
2. Apply a shortcut using Edit:Keyboard shortcuts... menu
Option to choose:
suggest to choose an option "context": "Text", so you can use more shortcuts which are busy with other contexts.
#target indesign
if (app.selection && app.selection[0].hasOwnProperty ("baselineShift") ) {
var cName = "Features bold";
var mCstyle = app.activeDocument.characterStyles.item(cName);
if (mCstyle.isValid)
app.selection[0].applyCharacterStyle(mCstyle);
else
alert ("CharStyle: " + cName + " not found");
else
alert ("Some text supposed to be selected...");
Jarek

Cross references not picking up character styles in source text

I'm getting some annoying odd behaviour with cross references in Frame 12.
I have some tables, where the paragraph style in the cell is called "Cell Body" (nothing odd there).
Quite a few of the cells only have one word in them, and that word is set to courier font with a character style (called "Code").
Then, elsewhere in the document, I am referring to this text using cross references. I am referencing the paragraph style Cell Body, and the cross reference format applied is like this "<hyperlink><$paratext><Default ¶ Font>"
"hyperlink" is another character style that makes the text go green.
So, the cross reference out to take the text from the cell (in Courier) and reproduce it, coloured green.
However for about half of these cross references, it isn't picking up the Code character style in the source text, so the cross ref is just green, no green courier.
Things are further bamboozled when I output to HTML Help.
In the CHM file, the cross refs which appear to work OK (green courier) are now just courier.
The ones which failed to pick up the courier look the same as they do in Frame (just green).
Any ideas as to what's going on?
I've tried troubleshooting by clearing the cells, reapplying the para style and default character style, then reapplying the code character style, then replacing the cross reference - which sometimes seemed to fix it but didn't always.

Arnis Gubins wrote:
Using two character tags in-line together (a la <hyperlink><Code>) is asking for trouble. IIRC, FM doesn't re-apply these in order on an update and depending upon how they are defined (and what is set to AsIs), the outer one usually wins. .
So why does the blimmin' dialog invite me to do precisely that, by providing me with a list of all the character styles I have, and allowing me to select as many of them as I like??? /sulks/ Indeed, if Frame still shipped with a printed user guide instead of stupid "optimised for viewing on iPhones" online webhelp nonsense, I suspect I might very well be able to find an example in the manual of using multiple character styles in that dialog! If it doesn't want you to use more than one, why doesn't it grey out after you add the first one? /sighs/ The concept is called "cascading styles", it's a fundamental web paradigm! And it works in the main body text - why not in Xrefs!
Also, I have been very scrupulous to keep my character styles orthogonal so none of their AsIs's mash each other up.
But, rant over, I shall follow your splendid suggestion for a "Code Hyperlink" style.
Arnis Gubins wrote:
Also, x-ref formatting may behave differently in the new Publishing modules depending upon ....
...Depending on how badly designed and buggy this new Frame12 feature is, I should say! The Publish module should not randomly stop behaving in a WYSIWIG manner in completely undocumented fashion just because Adobe couldn't be bothered to code it properly. /sighs/
Frankly, for my current project, I've given up trying to jump through hoops for Publish - I'm concentrating on getting the Frame source right and assuming these quirks will be fixed in Frame 13 (or 14, depending on how superstitious they are). Because if I put in ad hoc workarounds for them in Frame 12, I (or a colleague) will only have to undo them later when they're fixed, and by then we'll all have forgotten what the original problem was.

[JS][CS3]Applying Character Style to First Word

I am a noob as far as Javascript is concerned, and I was hoping for a little guidance.
Here's my scenario: I have a book that has been typeset all in one file; the main content is all in one story. I want to select the first word of every text frame on each page and apply a character style. My goal is to utilize this character style to indicate page breaks in the XML--I'll map the style to a specific tag.
So far I have this poor specimen:
var myDocument = app.activeDocument;
var myPage = myDocument.pages.item(1);
var myTextFrame = myPage.textFrames.item(0);
if( app.activeDocument.stories[0].paragraphs[0].words[0] != null )
myTextFrame.paragraphs.item(0).words.item(0).appliedCharacterStyle =
myDocument.characterStyles.item('foo');
I know, I haven't set up any sort of loop yet (which will be trickier given the fact that there will be blank versos, etc). What I'm trying to do in this is to select the first word in the first paragraph on the second page--which it does in fact do. Problem is, the first paragraph on the second page starts on the first page, so I'm selecting that a word on the first page, not the second page.
As I said, lots of work to do but a little help on getting to the right word would be most appreciated.

Well, you were on the right track, but testing 'myText' fails if there is no text frame on a page because it fails one line earlier
>var myTextFrame = myPage.textFrames.item(0);
just before this, you should test the number of text frames:
if (myPage.textFrames.length > 0)
... your stuff ..
Only use this if you are absolutely positive there is just a single text frame on each page! A slightly better way would be to always loop over each textframe:
for (frames=0; frames<myPage.textFrames.length; frames++)
var myTextFrame = myPage.textFrames.item(frames);
..etc.
in which case you also don't have to test its length first (the loop will not be executed if there are zero text frames).
[Techy] Since you have only one continuous story, an even better way would be to loop over the textframes of that story alone. You have to identify the story somehow, and I usually click the text cursor in the one I need:
myStory = app.selection[0].parentStory;
or you can rely on the fact that the story starts in the only text frame on page 1:
myStory = app.activeDocument.pages[0].stories[0];
(I think that oughta work.) Then, each frame of this story up till the end can be found in the array
myStory.textContainers
which are usually text frames. You can loop over these using
for (frame=0; frame<myStory.textContainers.length; frame++)
myTextFrame = myStory.textContainers[frame];
..etc.

[CS5 JS] Problem in Applying character styles xml tag names

Hi,
e.g. 1
<italic>This is a italic text with superscript value</italic>
e.g.2
This is a superscript text with <bold>Bold superscript</bold>
<italic> mapped to character style "italic" and
 mapped to character style "sup"
In my java script I already mapped the xml tags to specific character styles. In some of the cases (see e.g.1 and e.g.2) I need to map it to other character styles.
In e.g.1 I need to apply a new character styles "italicSup" for the text "superscript value" same way
In e.g.2 I need to apply a new character styles "BoldSup" for the text "Bold superscript".
Can any know how to do this?
Green4ever

FYI, I am using
Win Xp-SP2, CS5 7.0.3

Character styles over ride text hyperlink styles

It took me a while to figure this out. I could not get my hyperlink styles to work. Just as an experiment I changed the text to none in the character style (I am using it styles on the entire site) and my hyperlink styles were working correctly. I think perhaps this would be helpful to know as many people seem to post about text hyperlinks not working properly

Thanks for posting this Marcy. This behavior is a known bug our engineering team has logged.
To workaround the problem you can select the hyperlinks within your text and remove the character style applied (i.e., change the character style to "none").
Best regards,
Corey

With Grep SUPERSCRİPT apply character style

I want the script with
contained in document SUPERSCRIPT
apply a character style
app.findGrepPreferences = app.changeGrepPreferences = null;
app.findGrepPreferences.findWhat = Position.SUPERSCRIPT; //??
//app.changeGrepPreferences.changeTo = "";
app.changeGrepPreferences.appliedCharacterStyle = "myChar";
app.activeDocument.changeGrep();
app.findGrepPreferences = app.changeGrepPreferences = null;

Try this,
app.findGrepPreferences = app.changeGrepPreferences = null;
app.findGrepPreferences.position = Position.SUPERSCRIPT;
app.changeGrepPreferences.appliedCharacterStyle = "myCar1";
app.activeDocument.changeGrep();
app.findGrepPreferences = app.changeGrepPreferences = null;
app.findGrepPreferences.position = Position.SUBSCRIPT;
app.changeGrepPreferences.appliedCharacterStyle = "myCar2";
app.activeDocument.changeGrep();
app.findGrepPreferences = app.changeGrepPreferences = null;
Vandy

Applying paragraph styles to placed text

I have a catalog document built with with master pages and paragraph styles. The layout has a grid of image boxes for product with a text box beneath for descriptions. The text boxes should have style 1 applied to the 1st line, and style 2 applied to the following lines. Style 1 is applied to the text boxes in the master, and has next style set to style 2 in the paragraph style settings. This works fine when typing directly in the document, but I am placing the text from a word document. When I place the text, InDesign is just applying the default text settings instead of the correct styles. Is there a way to get it to automatially apply the correct styles, or will I need to manually set the styles?
Using CS5
thanks,
Katie

Part of your answer is very easy: after you've placed your text, select a few paragraphs, and then right-click on "style 1" and select "Apply Style, Then Next Style." That's how to use "Next Style" on text that you've placed.
The other part of your question -
When I place the text, InDesign is just applying the default text settings instead of the correct styles. Is there a way to get it to automatially apply the correct styles, or will I need to manually set the styles?
is a fair bit more complicated. If you're placing Word files, and all of the text in Word is styled with "Normal," then you'd probably need to manually set styles. If the text is in Word, but is styled carefully, then you can click the "Import Options" checkbox upon placing, and you can do all kinds of things to the file, including stripping all Word formatting & mapping Word styles to InDesign styles. If you have text in some other format, it may be possible to automate styling, but it depends completely on what you have to place. Raw text with XML tags? CSV files? RTFs generated by a translation memory tool? If you can post example files or screenshots, we may be able to figure out a way to smooth out this part of your workflow, depending on the materials with which you're working.

InDesign erroneously applies character style to imported text

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for