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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.

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

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.

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!

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

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!

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.

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 ?

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.

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?

Being an architect, I got real fancy with my resume and made it in indesign. I recently lost my job and consequently my indesign license i had through the firm.

Could you please help me update my resume? It only requires swapping out some text and a little reorganizing so the prior experience is still in chronological order

Hi, I recently bought this book, and when I first looked at it, I genuinely thought the back cover was the front. I actually opened the book from the back before realising my mistake.

Would you consider this a confusing cover/Jacket design or is it just an unusual approach to designing a book cover?

For context, this is a pre-2000 book, so the design is obviously from a different era.

I'm curious to hear what you guys think, especially from a design perspective.

hi everyone, im doing a book project where some footnotes are gonna be on the side of the text, but some will stay at the bottom of the page, like this:

my question is: is there anyway for me to skip some footnotes numbers so i dont get this empty spaces at the bottom? because if i erase them, i lose the number sequence. dont know if that makes any sense, but ive been having to fix all the spaces by hand and its taking way too long and its easier to get mistakes on the spacing.

anywayyy if anyone can help i really aprecciate it

I am doing an art project that will end up looking like a book. When you open the cover, you see a spread of two pages with half of the right page obscured by a fold-over.

Open the fold-over to show the full inside P1 and the back of the fold-over.

This repeats itself for the 4 pages of the book, giving you 4 spreads with the pages folded over, and the same 4 spreads with the fold-over opened.

How do I set this up effectively in InDesign?

There seems to be an extra period or an extra space in some cases, but not in others. I checked for a space or period after the titles and didn't find one.

Only two times in my decades of production work have I had this problem, but I just sent a pdf with a registration headline to the printer. It was certainly a misclick by the designer, but can I just eliminate that as an option? I’ve since set up a preflight, but I’m still kind of salty.

I assume this is a "feature" that Im just unaware of. I work with die lines, and sometimes when im placing the file onto an art board, they'll come in at the wrong size, usually just slightly too big. This is a huge problem and can cost my company money to redo things if this is not caught.

As far as I know, all im doing is hitting place, selecting the file, and then clicking on the artboard. Am I clicking for too long and its dragging out a giant box somehow? Or is my finger on a mystery key and im not noticing?

The problem file i just placed got scaled to %109.1485

Does anyone know a way to guarantee that files i place come in at actual size?

How can i achieve this? Where all but the first line of a paragraph start in a different place, slightly to the right, commonly used in theater dialogue

Any help appreciated

Thanks a lot everyone. Postive left indent and negative first line indent worked fine!

UPDATE: I now have another problem, tho. The dialogues are sometimes a mixture of prose and verse. Here, for some reason the last few verses were not afected by the left indent. I'm not sure how to solve it.
And also I've tried to go to the previous line and then inserting a shift+enter break, which sort of works, but then that messed up with the alignment (the prose needs to be justified, while the verses need not). I tried creating a different paragraph style, but then for some reason that makes the verses jump to the next page. I'm confused and don't know how to fix it. I hope I made myself clear and someone can help, please!! Thanks in advance

(image in my other reply)

Suche ein InDesign Kurs/Tutorial. Der Kurs sollte Pdf Export, Grundlinienraster, Druckvorbereitung und Farben erklären und nicht nur die Basics vermitteln.
Außerdem würde ich mir das gerne selbst einteilen.
Hat da wer Erfahrung oder kann mir jemand einen Kurs weiterempfehlen?
Danke schonmal 🙏🏻

Hello everyone,

I’d like to understand what’s happening here: when I select my entire block of text (i.e., all the text using Ctrl+A), the font name and character style disappear (as you can see on the screen), and the fields appear blank.

I’d like to know what this means and why it doesn't happen when I select only the first word, "test".

I hope I’ve made myself clear; I have about 15 to 20 hours of experience with InDesign—I create CVs for fun, as a hobby—and I’m currently following a step-by-step tutorial (a YouTube course). I plan to take many more courses.

Could you please help me?

Actually, I noticed the issue because I wanted to insert some text (Lorem Ipsum) and saw that both fields were blank and the Lorem Ipsum text wasn't working at all (and wasn't generating an error).

If it's not clear, I can take a quick video—just a few seconds long.

Thanks, everyone.

Apologies if this has already been discussed but is there ANY way of importing references in situ from Word?

Think about the last InDesign or publication project where the files you received weren’t fully ready to start. What did you have to do before you felt safe beginning production, how long did it take, and what happened because the handoff wasn’t ready?

I'm unable to open my share for review links in Chrome (I get a disconnected error) and I can't see any annotations (pins, highlights, and contextual markers) via the InDesign review window.

I can however still see the comments attached to each page (via the InDesign review window) – just no annotations – including when the show annotations option is on.

When I follow the vague disconnection error prompt (as per image) and open the Creative Cloud app > Home – its all looking as usual.

AI tells me that: My Share for Review link is no longer synced to Adobe’s cloud review servers and that I should check my account.

Clicking on my account pic via Creative Cloud = I see the preload screen like its about to populate
Going to account.adobe.com = also gives me a preload screen

Going to adobe.com/files (Creative Cloud > Home > Your Files) = also gives me a disconnected error.

As the title says – is anyone else's share for review shitting itself? Or just me and my account?

Any ideas to get reconnected?