Comments on: Why Don’t Arrow Keys Work Next to Blank Fields?

By: Linda

Linda — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 03:32:13 +0000

Hold down shift+control+option+command and restarting InDesign.

By: Arumugam

Arumugam — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 13:03:26 +0000

Some times, the enter key, arrow keys and some other keys also not working in indesign CS3 and the same keys are working fine in notepad or ms word

Please help on this

By: tom johnson

tom johnson — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:18:25 +0000

So I just caught the dreaded grayed out arrows (again).

This symptom was very weird: The Character palette arrows worked, top level menu arrows did not. All type in the text area was exactly the same font, style, size and color. Even new text boxes which were empty had grayed out arrows.

I tried a few things that did not work (Mac CS4):

1. Restart did not help
2. Clicking and using modifier keys in the text box did not help
3. Exporting to InDesign Markup file did not help
4. Shut down and reboot did not help

Short of trashing the prefs and starting over, I tried to select just a random portion of the text and use the CMD Shift > modifier keys and when the text got too big to be displayed in the text box, shazaaam, the arrows were no longer grayed out. Things all work fine now and I did not have to trash prefs. New text boxes are fine, too.

By: David Gray

David Gray — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 21:13:37 +0000

@Alexandre: The fix for the grayed-out arrows is to clean your application and system font caches. I used the free Linotype FontExplorer X to do that, and it fixed the problem for me.

By: Ezra J Harvey

Ezra J Harvey — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 23:43:42 +0000

Thanks for your help guys- been driving me crazy! (I had the greyed out arrows). Oddly enough, i tried altering the text with Ctrl+Shift+>(Windows!), and that made the arrows reappear? Not gonna question it though!
Great site.

By: Alexander Alexiev

Alexander Alexiev — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 08:47:52 +0000

The simple trick: Select all text. Press Cmnd.+Opt+> or Cmnd.+Opt+< to increase or decrease size.

By: federico platon

federico platon — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 20:55:50 +0000

Hi David,

Yes sometimes I get puzzled too when the windows are empty, and even more when they are grayed, but still work.

Regarding the different sizes of type issue with the inability to use, type inside the window for the type size, I do not see how it could be changed, if it were active or fillable directly, it should apply the same value to every character selected, because as they work now they need to show and apply a real value number.
But we can still rely on a well known keyboard shortcut for changing the size up or down, one or more points, every character selected, thus the size relationship is kept. E. g., text is 12 points and a word is 14pt in small caps, I can change it via akeyb. shortcut to 14 and 16pt. easily. I would not think about an alternative (and easier) way of changing it.

By: Eugene

Eugene — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 18:51:02 +0000

Had a similar issue earlier.

The colour tint box was grayed out in the swatches panel, I just swapped over from fill and stroke and it was working again.

By: Somerset

Somerset — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 18:30:04 +0000

@Alexandre: I had the same problem too. Check to make sure you have all the latest updates. If it’s still not working correctly, try uninstalling and reinstalling, that’s what fixed to for me.

My best guess it was related to have an early edition of CS3 (ordered right after it came out, before any updates were incorparated into the release). Reinstalling the suite fixed that annoying problem and few other glitches I was having in the other programs.

By: Alan G

Alan G — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 02:04:39 +0000

@Alexandre: Yes, that’s exactly the situation. It has happened immediately after resetting preferences (literally: reset prefs, new doc, drag out a text frame and fill with placeholder text), so it’s not a corrupt prefs issue.

All the fields in the character panel are populated, so it’s not an issue of mismatching, and the Control Panel behavior (everything works) is always different from the Character Panel behavior (leading and size up/down are greyed out and up/down arrow keys don’t function), even as both display simultaneously.

The infuriating thing is it’s inconsistent. Sometimes it’s fine, sometimes it’s not, and I have yet to find a way to reliably reproduce (or not!) the problem. If I ever do find one, I promise to post it here.