Lesson G: Troubleshooting

• Open the document called Troubleshooting.indd in the “2 Frames & Shapes” folder. As it opens, you are going to see error messages that we’ll discuss. The first tells us that there are modified and missing links. This time, for the sake of learning, please click Don’t Update Links.

Missing Fonts and Find Font

The second message interrupts our dealing with the modified and missing links. This message tells us that there are missing fonts, too. In the poster project, we used this dialog box to activate fonts from the Adobe Fonts service. And if you open any document whose fonts are missing, but are available via that service, you should take advantage of that. However, in this case, neither missing font is available through Adobe Fonts. We’ll have to choose substitutes. If you completed the poster project, then you have two fonts that might serve.

The text that is set in the missing fonts is highlighted in pink and another font has been used.

• We’ll choose our own substitutes: click Find Fonts….

Note: The dialog box that opens can be accessed at any time to replace unwanted fonts with new ones by going to Type menu > Find Font…. It’s not only for missing font substitution.

• At the top of the Find Font dialog, highlight the first missing font. Notice that the Activate checkboxes are unavailable. The font that’s missing is an italic, which seems inappropriate for the body text to which it’s applied. We’ll choose something different.

• In the lower half of the dialog, choose Adobe Jenson Pro (a font we activated in the poster project) from the Font Family menu. If you didn’t or couldn’t activate it, choose another (Garamond would be nice, or even Times, if you must). For Font Style, choose Regular.
• Check the box for Redefine Style When Changing All. Styles allow us to capture and quickly reapply styling to text and are the subject of the next chapter.
• Click Change All. The body copy has now changed to Jenson, and since that font is not missing, that text is no longer highlighted in pink.

We need to repeat the process for the missing header font, Balford Base.

• Highlight Balford Base at the top of the dialog box.
• Choose Juniper Std as the Font Family in the Replace With section. It’s likely that Medium is now the Font Style. If you don’t have Juniper, choose something else to use as a header.
• Click Change All. The missing fonts are dealt with! Click Done.

Missing/Modified “Links”

• Have a look at the images. Notice that each has a different icon in its upper-left corner.

When your cursor hovers over the scarier icons, a useful note appears. You can contentedly ignore the first image’s chain-like icon because it means the link to that image is healthy. Let’s start with the photo of the bearded man. This one indicates that it’s been “Modified.” This means that sometime since that InDesign document was last saved, the image was edited (in this case, in Photoshop). It’s exceedingly rare that I wouldn’t want to see the current state of an image. Hovering over the modified link icon reveals a note that tells us to simply click the icon to update the image.

• Click that modified link icon (yellow triangle). You’ll now see what mischief was done in Photoshop. Happy and colorful!

The other image has a more serious issue: it’s deemed “Missing.” This can mean many things. It may really be deleted, gone. When this InDesign document was last saved, it recorded the image’s location in a certain folder. If it has been moved, InDesign will report it as missing. Another common trigger for this warning is if an image has been renamed. In any case, if the image still exists, it’s on us to tell InDesign where it is.

• Click on the red missing link icon. You will be presented with a system navigation dialog box in which you need to locate the image’s location. I’ll give you a hint: go to the folder “2 Frames & Shapes,” and then into the “Links” folder within. This is the last known location of the missing file. Perhaps it’s slipped into a subfolder there. Hey, psssst…

Ah, so it did find its way into a subfolder! Notice the checkbox at the bottom of the dialog box that says Search for Missing Links in This Folder. This is awesome for when someone’s renamed a folder that contains all the images in a document. For reasons we’ll cover later, that folder is often called “Links.” Some think this is unintuitive and rename it “images” or “pics,” but then your InDesign document won’t find them and mark them as missing.

• When you’ve located the image (it’s called conspiracy.tif), either double-click it or highlight it and click Open.