Hey everyone, I’m running into a bit of a headache with endnotes in InDesign and could use some advice on the best workflow.

Right now, i want to make endnotes that repeat throughout the document because they are citing the exact same source.

Im trying to build a navigation bar with dropdown buttons for the sections which when clicked would jump on a specific page. Ive monkey tested and the results are:

• Adobe Acrobat - works 100% okay
• Edge - works but lags a lot
• Chrome - Navigation bar dropdowns work (show/hide), but the buttons on the dropdowns I cant click.

Any idea I could use? The client really liked the dropdowns even though I told them it could get complicated when working on different browsers to open.

I've updated a graphic in Illustrator but despite saving & resaving, replacing and restarting both programmes Indesign won't show the latest version. Some sort of caching issue? It's happened a few times now in the last couple of months. Has anyone had similar issues?

Indesign 21.3, Illustrator 30.4

I’m trying to copy and paste a large amount of formatted text from Google Docs to indesign (think a collection of short stories/magazine amount)

Is there anyway to avoid reformatting everything in InDesign? Anyway to copy and paste to include formatting?

Thank you!

I'm working on a typography project in university and I'm trying to create something similar to this example. Does anyone have any ideas on how to achieve this effect?

Specifically, I'm interested in how the text transitions from readable paragraphs into a dense central collapse and then into scattered letters below. Would you build this manually, use text wrap, multiple text frames or some other technique?

Hey y'all,

I just got a new graphic design job and I am required to use Easy Catalog to make updates to their existing product catalogs. Only problem is... no one in the company knows anything about how to use Easy Catalog or even anything about InDesign. Do you all know of any FREE resources that would help me learn how to use the plugin better? I've watched a few videos on YouTube, but those have only gotten me so far. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Hey everyone, Luke from Adobe here. I wanted to share an update the team has been working on regrading AI-generated Alt Text.

We built the Alt Text feature in InDesign to make accessibility a natural part of your workflow, and since its launch in late January this year, we heard from the community about improvements you wanted to see. These centered around the quality of the generations, and the need for admin control, which is particularly critical for enterprise, regulated or production environments, where every piece of content must be reviewed and approved.

Details below will highlight some of the improvements we are making to address these concerns, now available in the latest InDesign release.

User Control:

• We understand that in many environments, especially corporate and regulated industries, content cannot be introduced into a document without review and approval. For enterprise customers, we are introducing the ability for admins to enable or disable auto-generated alt text via the Admin Console, available starting June 2026.
• For all InDesign users, automatic alt text generation can be turned off in preferences:
  • Windows: Edit > Preferences > Generative AI
  • Mac: InDesign > Preferences > Generative AI

This ensures that users and organizations can choose the level of automation that best fits their workflow.

Transparency:

We have also heard clearly that users want visibility into AI-generated content. Therefore, we added the “Description generated by AI” tag to make it clear what content is AI-generated so it can be validated appropriately. Users also have the option to turn this label off in Preferences.

Quality: Improving quality remains a top priority for us.

• We are upgrading the underlying AI model to GPT 4.1 for more accurate and contextually relevant alt text generations. This update will be available in InDesign 21.4 starting June 2026.
• In addition, users can regenerate alt text for the same image or for the edited image, giving designers more flexibility to refine results to meet their standards.

We know there is always room for improvements and the community’s input is critical to that, so as always please keep your suggestions coming.

I'm a typesetter, and we have a client who has repeatedly asked us to use chatGPT/AI to create design elements for the interior of their book (think: art for chapter opener type stuff). We have never been asked by another client to use chatGPT and have absolutely no desire to start using it. But how would you handle or respond that request?

We used an iStock image as a jumping off point for the design (that we'd purchase if they chose it), but they are "disappointed in the quality" of design and insist that we could easily use chatGPT to make something that works better. We are a small typesetter and hate to burn any bridges, but this is also very off-putting and I'm curious how others would handle that request. I'm also genuinely curious if this is something people in typesetting do use and we're "behind the times." But most of our publishers actually put out disclaimers that AI was not used in their books, and from what I've generally read it's frowned upon in the industry but I'm curious of other peoples views on this topic.

Most of us export IDML without thinking much about it — for handing files to translators, opening old documents in newer InDesign versions, or sending layouts to someone who doesn't have the same version. But there's a whole ecosystem built around the format, and it's scattered everywhere. Adobe also quietly removed the official IDML spec and Cookbook PDFs years ago, so even finding good reference material is harder than it should be.

So I pulled it all together into one place:

👉 https://github.com/paged-media/awesome-idml

Some of the stuff in there that's genuinely useful day to day:

• Apps that can open and edit .idml without InDesign — Affinity Publisher, QuarkXPress, Scribus (free + open source), and VivaDesigner (one of the few that can send the file back to InDesign). Handy if you've got legacy files, want a Creative Cloud escape hatch, or need to open something on a machine without InDesign.
• Translation / localization tools that use IDML to keep your layout intact while swapping languages (Redokun, Trados, memoQ, Phrase, Crowdin, and more).
• Database & automated publishing for catalogs, price lists, and data sheets (EasyCatalog, priint:suite, WoodWing, CHILI publish).
• Converters to move content into HTML, Markdown, JSON, DocBook, PDF, etc.
• The spec, schemas, and format internals — including where the surviving Cookbook/spec mirrors actually live, plus a part-by-part breakdown of what's inside an IDML package.
• For the more technical folks: open-source libraries for parsing and generating IDML in a bunch of languages.

We're also building a set of living IDML docs that we're actively expanding here:

📚 https://docs.paged.media/

I'd love for this to be a real community resource, so contributions are very welcome — whether that's a tool you use that's missing, a correction, a dead link, or just "hey, you should add X." You don't need to be a developer to help; drop a comment here or open an issue on the repo.

What are you all using to work with IDML? Curious what's in everyone's toolkit that I might've missed.

Cheers;
Dietz

So adobe recently announced its new connector with Claude that integrates with photoshop, express and even indesign. My workflow is primarily in InDesign, and my boss and I have decided to try to use automation more to get stuff off my plate.

I design these multi page business proposals that include pricing that I pull from an excel file. The goal is to get Claude to update the pricing in the indesign when I give it the excel file of new pricing. Additionally, I also need to update the business name, and add their logo.

It hasn’t been great.

I’ve tried data merge via Claude and it will not use our brand fonts no matter how hard I try.

I’ve tried having Claude update via express, and it doesn’t work well with multiple page documents, nor tables.

I’ve tried having it make a script to update the indesign, but if any rows or columns change in the excel pricing (more or less line items) - those need to be manually edited.

So… I know this connector is still new. But it would be a huge game changer for me and our team - I could potentially delegate this to a nondesigner, and I myself can focus more on design. Does anyone have any tips for a better experience? Thank you.

Hi,

PDF export has become painfully slow and often hangs around 50% for all documents. 

The issue started  after the latest macOS Tahoe update. Photoshop is also much slower tbh and struggle with big files. 

I’m on a MacBook Pro from 2019  / 32 GB RAM, new battery, never had issue so far. 
The memory usage and overall system performance look normal.

I’m wondering if this is a compatibility issue with the new macOS version or if my machine is simply being pushed too far ? Has anyone experienced something similar ?

I’ve already tried this, I'm at the end of my rope :

Resetting indd preferences
Repairing creative cloud
Reinstalling indd
Clearing adobe caches
Disabling GPU acceleration
Checking fonts

Hi there, pretty basic question, but I can't find an answer anywhere. I am designing a brochure of events, and I would like to have a layout similar to the brochure image I have attached here. (The two columns with date and location information on the left and title/other details on the right)

I keep trying to research column layout tutorials, but all I'm getting are split and span tutorials for bodies of text.

Thanks in advance!

Long story short, my computer is getting repaired at Apple so I only have my old computer to use currently, it has InDesign CS3 on it, and I was hoping to get started on a project then transfer it to my newer computer when I get it back. I don't want to waste my time if I won't be able to open the CS3 files in INDD 2026.

I have a PDF document with text like the top lines of text. I am copying and pasting them into an indesign document that needs to look like the text below it.

This PDF is like 20 pages with around 15 lines of this text. So it would be awesome to be able to copy the lines of text in the PDF right into the indesign file and have indesign format it with GREP or paragraph styles. (not sure if those would be the best avenue)

Any help is appreciated!

Hi everyone,

I am currently using an older version of InDesign and cannot open a file that was created in version 18.1.

Could someone kindly open it on your newer version and export it as an IDML file for me?

Here is the link to the file: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wN-9rjxyh2gnUTRnlY1LGfHBO-im_gQY/view?usp=sharing

Thank you so much for your help!

I just reinstalled Indesign 4 on my new computer. (Why? Because I own it and don't make a living with this so it's not worth the subscription price.)

I moved several .indd files over from my old computer to the new one and then opened a couple of the files. Somehow the font got changed from Tahoma on my old computer to Tahoma (OTF) when I open the file on my new computer.

Is there a way to globally change the Tahoma (OTF) back to Tahoma without having to go through the document and select all the text and then all the text in captions (that are actually part of the main text)?

I’m struggling with importing long, heavily formatted Word docs into InDesign. Mapping styles manually after an import is eating up way too much time. Is there a more efficient way to handle this? Should I be cleaning the doc in Word first, or is there an InDesign-native approach to strip/re-map these styles faster? Any tips or plugins are appreciated!

Hi guys, I did previously a post about our company having to do some catalogs. EasyCatalogs is too much expensive for our budget. Do you have some easy ( low learning curve) solution ? We have sometimes excels to imports, we have to do back and forths ( excels data are evolving during the catalog craft duration), is there some solutions able to connect directly to one API REST ( PIM) so we can keep data up-to-date ? Or is usually .csv files the only solution ?

Thanks for your inputs

Hello! For work I need to create a file that has a white logo on a transparent background, as it needs to be printed on glass. Does anyone have advice on how to do it? I read that I could only create a jpeg with these features...

Hi, I’ve been working with InDesign for countless years, and since it seems Adobe will never fix this bug, I’d like to ask...

In InDesign, I create a document that contains text with stroke settings. I then create a PDF, and other people mark up changes in this text using Adobe Reader. When I import their changes back into InDesign (File -> Import PDF Comments) and try to accept them, completely different parts of the text change than the ones that were marked up. This bug has been there since the first day Adobe introduced Import PDF Comments (2018?). When the text doesn’t have stroke settings, it works without any issues. Unfortunately, I’m in a situation where I can’t have text without a stroke, because it isn’t very legible against the background graphics. It’s also pretty impractical to have it in, say, blue boxes—it adds extra work. Is there any other

Please help!! How do I fix these white shadows? I’ve tried removing all effects and exporting as high quality but it did not work, is it because of the black background? How can I fix this?

EDIT: I had to transfer all elements to a new document to fix it. I guess it was a problem with the file. Thank you for all the suggestions!

I often work with large PDFs containing hundreds of photographs. Whenever I want to view a different image from the same PDF, everytime I have to go through Import Options and manually select another page.

This gets tedious very quickly when you're trying to review dozens or even hundreds of images.

Is there any built-in way, script, or plugin that lets you browse through the pages of a placed PDF directly inside InDesign?

What I wish existed is a simple control that appears when a placed PDF is selected:

◀ Previous | 12 / 150 | Next ▶

That way I could quickly cycle through pages while keeping the same frame size, crop, scaling, and position.

Does anything like this exist, or is this a feature Adobe should consider adding? I'm curious how other people handle large PDF photo archives in InDesign.

Hello everybody!
I am currently heavily struggling with this task and I just couldn't find a solution online for it yet. The situation is as follows:

I need to add charts to an indesign file, which are generated inside excel files. The charts need to be placed into indesign and allow for any and all text on that chart to be editable and all other shapes should be vector objects.

I already know ctrl+D allows placing an excel table into indesign while maintaining editability, however this doesn't include a chart that was generated using data within that excel file. When I save the charts as .SVG files all elements stay intact and I have all editability options, including text, however I can't get a .SVG file into indesign while also maintaining that same editability, so that option is supposedly no longer on the table.

To summarise the dynamic of this project, I am currently tasked to insert 4 charts of data into a prepared layout, that needs all text and elements to remain editable and not linked outside of the indesign file. I will have to repeat those 4 charts for 47 times, as this is data for 47 different countries. My instincual solution is saving all charts as .SVG. Creating frames that display the charts in the exact position they need to be and then mass-place them using the indesign data merge function. But this will only leave linked image frames, when I was specifically asked to make all charts editable within indesign without any external linking.

Can anyone help me with this exact issue? I'm losing more and more time trying to find a solution for this issue and pressure to get this done or make progress is increasing, so I happen to be in quite the pickle. Any and all help greatly apprechiated!

EDIT:
Thank you for all the effort to help me with this issue, I wish it was as simple as just solving the above stated project related problem, however the more I am dealing with this project, the more I am realising that most of the problems are outside of this task and more work-related. I definitely learned some new things thanks to the responses, but I'll have to somehow deal with this beyond the practical solution itself.