Paragraph Overrides

From AAUP-Wiki

Sometimes text within the InDesign file has an “override” applied to it. This means that a paragraph of text has a particular style applied to it, but the formatting of the text differs from what is specified in the style description. For example, the paragraph style specifies that the font is Adobe Garamond Pro Regular, but the actual text is Adobe Garamond Pro Bold. When the formatting of a paragraph of text differs from the specification in the style, then the paragraph style (in the Paragraph Style Palette) shows a “+” after the style name.

There are two ways that a paragraph can become overridden:

1. The first and most obvious way is if you deliberately change a setting using the Paragraph Palette (or the Control Palette). For example, if you change the font size of the text then the paragraph has an override applied.

2. A more insidious way of getting a paragraph with an override applied is during the Word Import Options process (see page 137 - 138 of the manual). Even if you map the Word paragraph styles to the InDesign paragraph styles, sometimes there will be hidden information in the Word file that will cause the text to become an overridden style in InDesign. It might not even be possible to fix this by using the trick in InDesign of “option-clicking” on the style name in the Paragraph Styles Palette to clear the override.

To reset the paragraph to the correct style, first select the entire paragraph’s text (four clicks will do this). Then change the paragraph’s style to “[Basic Paragraph]” (the first one listed) to clear all formatting. Finally select the desired paragraph style from the Palette. This will reset the paragraph back to the proper setting.