Check for Preflight Errors in My Document?

One of the biggest helpers in InDesign is the Preflight light. Where is this light? I’m glad you asked because once you know what its purpose is you will refer to it often while working in InDesign. The Preflight light is in the bar of icons at the bottom-left of the frame. When it’s green, the world is good—your document has no errors and will export beautifully. If it’s red it means, “Houston, we have a problem.” Because you are placing images into your InDesign document and also laying out copy, every once in a while the source image might get moved or changed, or maybe the text box isn’t large enough for your text—these are things that will affect your document’s health. When you do see red and aren’t sure what the problem is, just click the small down-facing arrow to the right of the light and choose Preflight Panel. This will open a panel that lists all the errors that need to be addressed in the document. When you double-click on an error, InDesign will jump to the section of your document where the error has occurred. In the example shown above, the text was overset, which means the text box wasn’t large enough for the text. So we need to address that and, once we do, the light goes back to a healthy green.