Aug. 6, 2008
Resetting your preferences can eliminate the little demons…
It’s surprising when talking with people, to find that many don’t know they can reset their InDesign preferences back to the default out of the box configuration. One person told me they had printed out screen grabs of each individual tab in the preferences dialogue, and when they wanted to revert back to InDesign’s defaults they used their printout as a reference.
There is a way to revert to the default out of the box preferences in InDesign, but before I show you how to do that, let’s talk about why you might want to do this. One reason would be to eliminate any of the weird and quirky things that sometimes happen in the InDesign environment. For instance, I have had a document that for some reason or another the links panel wouldn’t display the links that were obviously on the page. My options at that stage were either exporting the doc as an InDesign Interchange (.inx) file or resetting the preferences back to their default out of the box configuration. I decided to try resetting the preferences first because I noticed some weirdness on another doc I was working on the day before. I went with the hunch and bingo!
Resetting these preferences can sometimes go a long way to eliminating all sorts of technical quirks, so the next time InDesign goes AWOL give it a go, you may be surprised. Oh, make sure you know what your old preferences were so you can go through and set them up just the way you like. Enough of all that, lets look at how to reset them.
Well first of all make sure you have quit InDesign. Mac Users, while pressing Shift+Option+Command+Control, start InDesign. Click Yes when asked if you want to delete preference files, this dialogue will appear twice. Once you choose Yes to both dialogues you can release your fingers from the keyboard. Windows users, start InDesign, and then press Shift+Ctrl+Alt. Click Yes when asked if you want to delete preference files, this dialogue will appear twice, once you choose Yes to both dialogues you can release your fingers from the keyboard.
Video Instructions (all videos are quicktime movies): 1. Click on the “CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL” hyperlink, a new window appears, once the video has downloaded completely (speed varies depending on internet connection) the video will commence. 2. Right click on the “CLICK HERE TO WATCH TUTORIAL” hyperlink and choose “DOWNLOAD LINKED FILE AS” to save the video to your computer. Once downloaded open the .mov file in Quicktime to watch. 3. Subscribe to the creativementor.com.au now Podcast through iTunes.
6 Responses to “Resetting InDesign preferences”
I teach a yearbook class in our high school where we use InDesign and have been having trouble for WEEKS trying to fix a page someone had been working on and somehow, their text tool became inescapably linked to a horrid gradient effect that couldn’t be removed. Create a new document and everything you type in it had that effect. We’d been trying to find a way to remove the text effects to no avail. However, we noticed that other people during the day who use the same computer and the same program (different logins) didn’t have the same problem. So I thought it might be a preference that got inadvertently saved and tried this suggestion. It worked PERFECTLY and we are once again moving forward. Thank you so much for this page!!!!
By Doug Stevens on Jan 24, 2009
THANK YOU!!!
I was driven insane by my pathfinder palette for some reason it just wouldn’t show the options. I did this and it finally fixed the bug. thank you so much.
By neomi on Jan 28, 2009
The procedures that you have on your website is a God Send as there are little or no books that cite the procedures to Reset Preferences and your website cites it directly and to the point. Excellent.
By Frank on Apr 2, 2009
Thanks Frank!
I have been using InDesign for years and occasionally I want to go to a book and look into things. I’m yet to discover one that gets right into all the technicalities of InDesign. Most give good coverage but there’s nothing out there for the advanced.
I hear you loud and clear!
By Neil Oliver on Apr 2, 2009
Hi Neil,
and on a pc???? Cheers
By Simon on Sep 8, 2009
Check out the last paragraph of the post post - http://creativementor.com.au/resetting-indesign-preferences
By Neil Oliver on Sep 8, 2009