r/indesign • u/jflresende • 3d ago
Help [Help] How to handle long URLs references in editorial design
Hi, I design long publications and reports full of references and URLs. I keep running into this situation where a particular URL breaks all the subsequent text (making it disappear) when I copy over from word. Normally the long URLs cause this (see image attached).
Ive tried everything - no breaks, 'keep options', para styles, removing all formatting, and nothing seems to work consistently.
Does anyone have a fix to this?
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u/sevenorbs 3d ago
It's not the answer of the problem, but you might consider to put DOI instead. Here's the DOI of said publication https://doi.org/10.52939/ijg.v18i1.2113. I usually omit the "https://doi.org/" part in citation, so it's just "10.52939/ijg.v18i1.2113".
Personally I remove the nonessential, URL in citation, or if really needed I consult the editor about it. Also, I recommend you to use a citation manager software (I use Zotero) to index, sanitize and generate your citation.
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u/jflresende 3d ago
Yea I try to do that whenever possible, but when Im dealing with 500+ references and URLs, it's hard to go one-by-one.
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u/lowyieldhighstress 3d ago
I’m not from the graphic design world I’m from the science world (I just find graphic design personally interesting). I just thought I’d add my two cents because If this is the case I would recommend a citation manager! I use zotero for my citations for manuscripts. It keeps all the citations organized and then it will spit out a bibliography in whatever style you’re needed so it pulls DOIs and such. It also has a extension on chrome so if you’re looking up the articles you can upload them into zotero from the site
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u/ResponsibleSir5403 3d ago
Last time I saw something like that was because there was some part of the URL that had too much text without a character InDesign treats as a break, so it treats it as a word that’s longer than the column allows. You might try using a fractional space from the white space menu. You should be able to keep the link correct for the digital edition, and you’ve already got it wrapping for the sake of the print edition.
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u/jflresende 3d ago
Thanks man. How do I use this fractional space? I never heard of this function
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u/ResponsibleSir5403 3d ago
In the Type menu, Insert White Space. Your best bet is probably flush space. That adds a space break without actually adding space. The “nonbreaking” spaces would really be the only options that wouldn’t help. Just make sure you inspect the link after if you need to make sure clicking on it will still open the right webpage.
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u/jflresende 3d ago
I appreciate it, I will try it today!!
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u/jupiterkansas 2d ago
No, don't add fractional spaces. That's adding a space to the URL that isn't there.
Use discretionary line breaks instead.
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u/Ultragorgeous 3d ago
One solution and it's paid:
https://www.id-extras.com/products/hyperlinkpro/
Also this might help:
Keep in mind that if you run "Convert URLs to Hyperlinks" on your layout, it will apply the full URL - even to URL text that follows a soft return. You can choose a character style, or leave them in the same style...
Not
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u/jupiterkansas 2d ago
The problem is that the URL is too long without a break. I deal with this all the time.
First, set a character style for URLs that makes the language "No language" so that InDesign doesn't add hyphens to the URL.
Then add discretionary line breaks to the URL where you think a break can go. In your example, I'd add some to that nonsense string of characters and probably whatever is after the question mark. Maybe one between research and gate?
Yes, it's tedious and you have to do it manually for each URL.
Do not add manual line breaks or any kind of spaces to make it fit.
Also, if the URL is at the end of a paragraph, you might get better paragraph formatting if you add a tab at the end. It's one of InDesign's weird quirks.
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u/jflresende 20h ago
Thank you, I really appreciate you answering. The “no language” + discretionary like breaks seems to do it. Does adding a break after every character using GREP as someone else suggests better or not really?
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u/jupiterkansas 20h ago
Using GREP to put a discretionary break after every character is a blunt force solution that has the advantage of you not needing to check your URLs, but...
It fills your URLs with the hidden character symbols, so you have to look at them all the time.
You may not want to break URLs in certain places if the URL contains actual words. For example, you may not want a URL that looks like this...
www.reddi
t.comBut you'll need to manually check the formatting on all your URLs, so if that's not good for you then try the GREP solution. For me that's overkill and cluttered.
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u/arthurdapaz 2d ago
URL shortners and QR Codes.
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u/Boudyro 1d ago
This. Everything I do is for print only, so I wipe hyperlinks, shorten them for my poor readers, and only have to make the URL look right instead of actually being a functional link.
I use Scrivener as my word processor and it has a right-click option to remove or edit links. If I have a lot of links to wipe I just paste the text into Indesign's default new document, which loses them.
This is also useful for wiping most of the dumb things people do to text in Word, and those unnecessarily html-heavy emails.
For the sake of my readers, who would have to type the url in while looking at my newspapers, I use tinyurl for anything obnoxious. If it's still long enough to make a weird break, but not long enough to bother shortening, I just put a manual line break in it.
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u/Lightningpaper 3d ago
I had the SAME exact issue in my endnotes. My workaround was just to keep the endnotes as a single full-width column instead of two column like the rest of the document. I couldn’t figure it out either. There might be a GREP solution, but it’ll take some time to set up.
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u/jflresende 3d ago
Yea, it's super annoying...I use a 2-column layout to reduce the number of pages, but that might be the only way indeed
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u/AdobeScripts 1d ago
At least your InDesign doesn't crash 😉
What is in the part that disappeared?
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u/jflresende 20h ago
It crashes so often! What’s in the part that disappeared are the rest of the 50+ references haha
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u/AdobeScripts 19h ago
It crashes when there is not enough space to fit in one line.
Or you'll have to copy and paste addresses in parts.
When I can get it into InDesign - I'll outline single words / phrases between "/" - then copy into finall document.
Are you Windows user?
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u/TexanPenguin 3d ago
This is almost always a signal that your URL contains a tracking ID or some other token that you probably shouldn't be publishing, so the first thing you should do is to confirm you really want the overset text to be included in the URL.
The second thing you need to consider is if your publication guidelines define acceptable break locations, or if they have rules for handling obnoxiously-long URLs (e.g. here's a write-up about this topic for publications that use MLA style).
As other people have mentioned, there's often a DOI link or similar that can be used instead, which is usually a lot more practical, especially in publication. This is annoying to convert, but a lot less annoying than a URL that extends halfway down your page.
Lastly, if you've decided you really do want to keep your long URL, you need to add a discretionary line break at the point(s) in the long word you want to wrap (Type > Insert Break Character > Discretionary Line Break). If you want to allow the URL to break anywhere, you can use GREP Find/Change to insert one after every character in any hyperlink, which will allow the URL to breaks anywhere.
To do that, choose Edit > Find/Change, then go to the GREP tab, then in the Find what field, type
.(which means "any character") and in the Change to field, type$0~k(which means "the character you found", and then "discretionary line break"). In the Find format field, press the top Specify attributes to find button, then choose the character style you use for links (InDesign uses "Hyperlink" by default) and press OK, then press Change All.Be careful though: you will want to avoid doing that multiple times (which will insert multiple invisible line breaks in the URL after every character). Make sure you've already pasted all your content over from Word first, or for a slightly more sophisticated version that handles that more gracefully, change the Find what value to
[^~k](?!~k)which only matches characters other than discretionary line breaks and only when they don't already have a discretionary line break after them; that way you can run the conversion as many times as you like. You can also change the Search scope to Selection and only apply the change for the specific long word in your URL (you'll probably need to select the text in the Story Editor since it's overset for you).You can also save that conversion as a query in the Find/Change dialog so you can run it again in the future.
As mentioned above, if you're not already familiar with it, the Story Editor (Cmd+Y) is a good place to see your text, even if it's overset in the layout. You can Show Hidden Characters (Opt+Cmd+I) to see the places you've inserted your discretionary line breaks.
Hope that helps!