You’ve worked hard on an InDesign layout, and are about to send a PDF to the editor for review, and this Warning dialog appears, telling you there is overset text on page 1. Whether there are 1, 2, 3 or more overset text frames on the page in question doesn’t matter to this warning dialog.
So you might find yourself going back to Page 1, fixing the first overset text frame you find, only to find the Warning dialog pops up once again when you try to PDF the document.
If you’re using InDesign CS4, there is a much easier way to navigate to the each and everyone of the overset text frames: InDesign’s Preflight comes to the rescue! And… its out-of-the-box set-up in InDesign CS4 already locates Text Overset.
Let’s look at how we can work with this feature to find all occurrences of overset text and fix them before sending out a PDF.
Preflight
InDesign enables live preflighting for all documents out of the box, using the [Basic] profile. You might have noticed the green or red circle icon in the status bar in the lower left corner of your document window.
You can access all the preflight tools from the Status bar (or else from Window > Output > Preflight) . The “Enable Preflight For All Documents” option in the status bar indicates that live preflighting is indeed enabled for each InDesign document. You can disable that if needed, and opt to preflight a document on a needs-only basis, by enabling the “Preflight Document” option.
![Prefight panel with Profile: [Basic] set as working profile](http://carijansen.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/preflight_on.png "preflight_on")
To see which errors are picked up by the working Preflight profile, choose Preflight Panel from the status bar. The default active profile is [Basic]. If this profile is not your active profile select it from the drop-down menu. The document I’m checking contains 2 Text errors.
Clicking the arrow in front of “Text” to expands the error-log, and displays a sub-menu of errors, grouped by error-type. Expand each error-type to see each occurrence of that error in the document.
Each individual error contains a link marked by the page-number. Click this link to jump to the problem item in the document. After each issue has been fixed InDesign’s Preflight should give you the green light 🙂
You’re now ready to create that PDF with the assurance there is no overset text anywhere in your document.
I love your tutorials. Is there any way to check for overset text on on Master pages. Preflight is not catching overset
Thank you so much for your help.It has been a lifesaver
@Cari Thanks alot.. it worked! 🙂
@Shailesh, it means you are trying to open an InDesign document that was saved in a later version of InDesign, than the one you are using. Ask the person sending you the files to File > Export them to InDesign Markup Language. then you can open the .IDML file in InDesign CS4 or higher. — Cari
@Hello Cari.. how you doing?
again i’m in little trouble 😀 can you please explain me what is .RPLN plugins are? these extensions are not allowing me open files. Need help!
@Cari. Hey I found the problem area. There was little difference between Paragraph Styles. Have sorted it by applying same attributes to the styles of both documents. Anyways, thank you very much for your guidance! – Shailesh
Excellent, glad you got it sorted Shailesh 🙂
@Cari.. I’m using CS5. Both documents have their own master pages but with same page size and margins. Has it anything do with Paragraph Styles or some other default settings?
@Shailesh. Which version of InDesign are you using? I’m wondering if your master text frame associated with Master Page is different when you move the pages around? Sometimes that cases frame sizes to change, which could result in overset text. — Cari
@Cari..
i’m creating a book with 2 different files with same specifications.. (only difference is one file is of color & another one has b/w pages .
but when i move pages some overset text error appears for moved pages..can you please help me out to avoid this overset text error?
@Jessie Ensure your screen mode is set to Normal, and also from the Type menu select Show Hidden Characters. If you can navigate to the text frame that has overset text (by clicking on the little blue link in the Preflight panel), but still don’t see the overset character, try viewing the text in the Story Editor (Edit > Edit in Story Editor), A red line is positioned next to the overset text. It might just be a spare return character you are looking for.
i’m in CS5 and it says i have overset text and I can not find it at all on the page. I adjusted text boxes and deleted info nothing works.
@Jack you will still be able to see the ‘Errors’ using Preflight panel (as the rest of this write-up describes).
To reset your dialog warnings.:
Go to InDesign Preferences : General and click the Reset All Warning Dialogs button
There will be one check box in the warning dialogue box ‘Don’t show again” if i checked once in the document how can i bring it back? Please help. . .
Thanks. Explained the situtaion to me in just 30 seconds. Another 2 minutes to solve the document issues.
Great explanation and also good tips from other readers.
Excellent! thanks for the tips.
@Eddy, thanks for adding that note Eddy, great initiative.
Hi,
if you want to have more capable live preflight profiles for Adobe InDesign, VIGC (the Flemish Innovation Center for Graphic Communication) has published a free set of live preflight profiles, including tutorials explaining multiple preflight checkes, among which the overset text, but also the lesser known transparency blending space.
You can download them for free: http://www.vigc.org/standard-preflight-profiles/ (you will see a registration form, but it’s not mandatory).
The different profiles that we have assembled, are geared towards the same market niches as the PDF creation and PDF preflight profiles of the Ghent PDF Workgroup (www.gwg.org). E.g. magazine ads, high quality sheetfed cmyk, …
I too am a noobee
Thank You for a very helpful and necessary explanation. I wish ID was as clear and intuitive to use as your tutorial. I mean big red arrows pointing to the MINUSCULE link for the error would when one opens the pre flight panel/error log would suffice. They could use an idiot button so those users that were not idiots could choose to shut off the obnoxious red arrows…..I on the other hand, am not so lucky…
I now have my happy little green dot back.
Hi Cari,
This was very much helpful for me. I’m a newbie. Thank you so much for this.
Hi Amir,
You are most welcome. I’m glad the tip was helpful.
Cheers,
Cari
Hi Joel,
Thank you for the kind words 🙂
Cari
Cari,
Thanks for a lucid and helpful post on this very important ID function. Understanding how to preflight your documents can save users from a ton of worries at the other end. And your graphics (love those big arrows!) are super clear.