Eliminating Text Frames

[coppersnowboarder]

I printed a draft of my 155-page book from InDesign.
Despite the fact that all of my text frames indicate "none+", unwanted text frames appear
in about half of the book and cannot be eliminated.
I spent two days clicking on each text box, making sure that the [] box indicated "none+" for each frame.
Still, the frames continue to print from my printer.
However, no frames exist randomly throughout the book.

Any ideas on how to eliminate text frames that InDesign indicates do not exist?

coppersnowboarder

 

[scr1bbler]

Check your master pages. It's possible that adjustments made in your document (such as text frames) are being ignored because there are text frames on your master page(s).

If that doesn't isn't it, make text frames on all the pages, turn them to white, and try again. (That's assuming you're printing on white paper.)

 

[coppersnowboarder]

Text box frames:

I still do not know how to remove the boxes around some text and captions. Most of the frames are gone, but others persist.
I attempted to discover any layers of frames to delete.
No results. The frames look like the default basic frames and continue to print on my laser printer and appear in the data files.

PDF:

I finally found the solution to creating true PDF files for submitting to the printer or transferring files to others on CD.
The answer to creating PDF files is found in the InDesign 4.0.2 User Guide on page 386 and InDesign CS2 for Dummies on page 346.
My opinion is that the creation of PDF files should be given much higher priority in a user guide and more clearly identified within the index, since conversion of InDesign files into PDF files is essential to share the data files and incorporate the photograph files.

.JPG:

My photograph .jpg files total 1.3 GIG. Thankfully, this apparently is overkill, not underkill. The offset printer companies all insist that I need to scan at 600 dpi. My final PDF file is only 341 MEG, about 2 MEG per page of text and photographs. However, that is consistent with the files at 300 dpi in .jpg that I previously submitted with WORD .doc files to my newspaper without resolution problems.

 

[coppersnowboarder]

The solution to the text box frame problem:

I spent the afternoon clicking on each text box.
At the top of the InDesign pages, I set the frame width to "0" from "1" which eliminated the boxes from the layouts. Apparently, I used the wrong technique to create the boxes. I should have clicked on "T" and stretched all of the text boxes across the lay-outs. By the time I was halfway through my lay-outs, I was using this technique, creating text boxes with a frame width of "0" or the empty frame. The reset is the setting box immediately left of the frame option at the top of the InDesign lay-out page.

 

[rgoerss]

If you're spending a lot of time doing batch editing in InDesign, it might be worth your while to learn about InDesign scripting. The task of running through all the text frames and changing the border stroke to 0pt could have been automated and completed in about a minute, as opposed to the days it must have taken to do it manually.

There are some nice PDF documents available from Adobe that explain InDesign scripting and provide a function reference. It's not the greatest reference in the world, but it works.

What platform are you working on? e.g. Windows XP, Mac OS X, etc.

 

[rgoerss]

Apparently I can't edit my post, but I wanted to add this:

I work in the print industry as a software engineer, but with a strong background in prepress and graphic design. I can tell you right now that if they are asking for 600 PPI art, then it is probably because they require it in order to ensure their print quality. Offset printing in particular is very precise. I mostly worked with flexo, and we required 300 PPI art for presses that printed anywhere from 200 to 300 PPI. It is not at all uncommon for offset/litho presses and digital presses to print at much higher resolutions than that. If you supply low res art, then all you're doing is hurting your print quality if they will even accept it. You can always use a lossless file compression format in place of image compression so that you can fit the files on a single DVD or CD.

When you are compiling a PDF document for your print shop, try to make sure that your artwork is at the requested PPI and use linked files rather than embedded art. This will allow their prepress department to easily make modifications to the art if necessary in order to prepare it for press, and it will ensure that your work is printed at the highest quality possible. Many print companies will refuse to work with low-PPI embedded artwork because it is too difficult to ensure quality print in such a manner. I know that we will refuse such artwork without hesitation, and if they are accepting it... Well, they aren't really doing you any favors there.

You might also look into some pre-flight software in order to ensure that your digital files are not missing any linked fonts or artwork that could slow down the prepress process, add additional labor cost or result in inaccuracies. That's just some friendly advice. The cost of good preflight software is usually offset in short order by the savings in time and labor cost when your work goes to prepress, especially if you plan on doing more work with print companies in the future.

Sorry for sounding so preachy.