continued text frames are empty

[drdocument@adobeforums.com]

I'm working on a newsletter with several stories. Each story has been imported from a different Word file.

When I select the "out port" to flow remaining text into another column the "out port" continues to indicate that there is more text in the story even when there isn't, and if I then click the "out port" and click in another column another empty text box is created, with another "out port" indicating there is more text.

I've edited the story in Story Editor, going to the end of the text and selecting everything following (although there's nothing to select) to make sure that's really the end of the story, and there are no more characters; however, the "out port" still indicates there's more text.

What's up?

Ken

[Dave_Saunders@adobeforums.com]

Do you have Show Hidden Characters active on the Type menu to check that you really are looking at the end of the story?

The symptoms you're describing suggest that you have a wide paragraph all set to No Break after the visible end of your story, perhaps made up of invisible characters? Sounds unlike given what you say in the topic, but it's the only thing I can think of that is even vaguely consistent with your description of the problem.

Dave

[drdocument@adobeforums.com]

Thanks for the reply, Dave.

I activated Show Hidden Characters and there's a red pound sign (#) at the end of the text which cannot be selected or deleted. The text cursor won't even move past it.

Any idea what that is and how to fix? Other text blocks have a paragraph mark at the end.

Ken

[Dave_Saunders@adobeforums.com]

That's the end of story marker. If everything up to that is visible and yet you're seeing an overset text marker (the red +) in the outport (as opposed to the little triangle thingie which merely means that there's another frame threaded to this one), then something's wrong with your setup.

Try trashing preferences to see if the problem goes away.

Dave

[drdocument@adobeforums.com]

Thanks, Dave.

The ending text frame has the little triangle in the outport, not the plus sign. I looked up in Help the way to cut a text frame from a thread, so I thought I'd simply click to add a new frame to the thread (even though there's no text).

When I did that, a new text frame was created but now the outport on the original ending text frame and the inport on the new text frame are both blank.

The original ending text frame (which is supposed to be the last one in the thread) still has the red pound sign (end of story marker).

Now I've deleted the text frame I added, and in the final text frame (the one with the end of story marker), the outport is a blank square. So I guess I've done it correctly, right?

I looked at preferences, but there's an awful lot to delete, and I'm not sure which one(s). I did delete the Version 3.0 folder from User/Preferences/Adobe InDesign (since I'm running ver. 4.x). If I did get to the point where I felt compelled to delete preferences, which would I delete? The entire "Version 4.x" folder? Some?

Thanks,

Ken

[drdocument@adobeforums.com]

Hey, Dave, problem solved (I think).

I went through each two-page spread and did Select All to show all text frames, and found some extras which contained no text. They likely were left over when I placed the Word files and then reapplied my Body Text style and deleted double returns, etc., thus shortening each article considerably.

With those extra text frames deleted, the existing stories now end as expected, with the outbox clear.

Ken

[Dave_Saunders@adobeforums.com]

Ah, I thought you might be misinterpreting those little symbols. They don't mean: "there's more text following" just "there's more text frames following." The red plus in the last frame indicates overset text, and it is possible to be in the situation where you have overset text even though there are empty text frames in the thread, if a line of text is too wide to fit in any of the frames (as can happen if you have no break assigned to a whole paragraph, for example).

Dave

[drdocument@adobeforums.com]

Oh, yes, I knew what the symbols meant. I was simply expecting a thread of text frames to automatically end itself at the end of the story. If I'm not mistaken, that's the way it used to work in PageMaker and perhaps earlier versions if InDesign.

However, on reflection, I can imagine uses in which it would be helpful to have a thread of text frames as placeholders.

Interestingly enough, I had moved these particular stories after initial placement by selecting the entire text of the story, cutting, and the pasting the story on a different page, after which the newly-created text frames became part of the same thread as those remining, now-empty, frames from which the text had been cut. That's probably in the documentation somewhere and I just haven't read it yet.

Thanks for the help, Dave. This has been a truly valuable learning experience.

Ken

[Diane_King@adobeforums.com]

You can also turn on view text threads so that when you have a text frame selected you can visually see how it ties together with other threads. It's annoying to leave on, but if you need to find empty text frames, it can be useful.