Why does subscript stop working?

I've had this problem, too, and found a lot of similar threads in these forums with no resolution. I may have stumbled across something useful, though.

The last time it happened to me, I was playing around with a few documents I had open, trying to find some pattern to the coming-and-going of the sub- and superscript functions. I noticed that often, if I switched from one document to another, the functions would return. So if they were grayed out, and I switched to another document and back, they would be back for a while. Often, as soon as I did something with the document, they deactivated again.

So then I tried closing all but one document - and then the functions became active again full time. And when I reopened another document, they kept working.

So Andrew, or anyone else who finds this thread, see if closing all but one document solves the problem, at least temporarily. If it works for everyone, then at least it's a relatively quick fix when the problem starts.

Try changing fonts and see if that makes a difference.

I haven't had the problem so can't track it down.

OSX 10.7 has changed how you access special characters, have you tried holding down the letter/number to see if you can get the alternate character popup?

Peter

Perfect behavior under 10.7.3

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) lundi 19 mars 2012

iMac 21”5, i7, 2.8 GHz, 12 Gbytes, 1 Tbytes, mac OS X 10.6.8 and 10.7.3

My Box account is : http://www.box.com/s/00qnssoyeq2xvc22ra4k

I get the same behavior too. Greyed out superscript/subscript in both the toolbar and the menu. I can raise and lower the baseline but not select superscript or subscript. Note in the following image (if you can make it out) I have superscripts in the text but the sup/sub icons are greyed out in the toolbar (and in the menu).

I was able to fix it by closing other text files that I had open.

Are you sure that the character which you wanted to set as upperscript was selected ?

Here the feature behave flawlessly (10.7.3)

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) mardi 24 avril 2012

iMac 21”5, i7, 2.8 GHz, 12 Gbytes, 1 Tbytes, mac OS X 10.6.8 and 10.7.3

My Box account is : http://www.box.com/s/00qnssoyeq2xvc22ra4k

Koenig look at my picture, the selections in the tool bar are greyed out, unselectable. It's a bug. It doesn't work sometimes, presumably due to some interaction with other open documents. I fixed it by closing other documents.

The fact that it's working for you doesn't really help those for whom it's not working.

I apologize but if you don't select a character as I did (but your screenshot prove that you didn't select one) it's logical that the menu items aren't enabled.

If it works here it's because I selected the character « 2 » before triggering the menu.

If it doesn't on your machine, I guess that it's because your selection is not a character, just the location between two characters.

I looked and read carefully what you posted.

You didn't look and read carefully what I posted.

I will repeat hoping that this time you will read carefully :

Are you sure that the character which you wanted to set as upperscript was selected ?

Next time, before writing that there is a bug, start checking what you are doing !

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) mardi 24 avril 2012

iMac 21”5, i7, 2.8 GHz, 12 Gbytes, 1 Tbytes, mac OS X 10.6.8 and 10.7.3

My Box account is : http://www.box.com/s/00qnssoyeq2xvc22ra4k

Yes I selected a character before going to the menu. But it doesn't matter if you select a character or not. You can test this out yourself. Take a document and click anywhere. The superscript/subscripts icons do not become greyed out. You can change the font status to superscript by clicking on the tool bar or selecting it in the menu without needing to select a character or word or paragraph.

Unfortunately given that I don't know how to cause the bug I can't tell you how to replicate it. I can tell you how I solved mine but you'll have to just trust me when I tell you it's a bug. At least until you run into it yourself.

Just to show you, here's a screen shot with the cursor between two letters. The subscript/superscript icons are not greyed out. I haven't been able to replicate the bug. Not that I would want to but it was there until I closed the other documents.

I finally got a chance to catch some screenshots of this myself, with text selected to back up Klatzy's and my own experience. Like Klatzy says, you may have had no trouble, but for me this pops up fairly regularly when I have multiple documents open. If I figure out an exact sequence of events to trigger it, I'll post that.

OSX 10.7.3

Pages 4.1 (923)

I apologizes but I'm unable to reproduce the described behavior.

(1) try to run Pages from an other account. This way we will know if the corrupted item is in your current account or if it's in the global part of your system.

(2) Run FontBook to check your fonts.

I repeat that there is no bug on this point.

You just have something corrupted somewhere.

If the problem is specific to your current account, first possible culprits are :

Pages preferences file :

<startupVolume>:Users:<yourAccount>:Library:Preferences:com.apple.iWork.Pages.pl ist

iWork fonts cache file :

<startupVolume>:Users:<yourAccount>:Library:Caches:com.apple.iWork.fonts

Check also the contents of the folder :

<startupVolume>:Users:<yourAccount>:Library:Fonts

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) mercredi 25 avril 2012

iMac 21”5, i7, 2.8 GHz, 12 Gbytes, 1 Tbytes, mac OS X 10.6.8 and 10.7.3

My Box account is : http://www.box.com/s/00qnssoyeq2xvc22ra4k

I have the same problem with multiple Pages documents open- it is definitely a bug that has been around a while. What does it take to bring it to apple developers' attention I wonder. It "should" be easy to fix. At least closing all but one doc seems to restore the functions.

Did you applied the tests described above ?

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) samedi 28 avril 2012

iMac 21”5, i7, 2.8 GHz, 12 Gbytes, 1 Tbytes, mac OS X 10.6.8 and 10.7.3

My Box account is : http://www.box.com/s/00qnssoyeq2xvc22ra4k

This problem is absurd. I have had this problem for more than a year and I only now found this thread. I was unable to use superscript or subscript periodically and I couldn't figure out why. After finding this thread a few minutes ago, I closed six Pages documents leaving one open and suddenly my superscript and subscript buttons became functional again.

I think Apple is spending too much time on iOS and neglecting those of us who need our computers and software to "just work".

Thank you for this solution. Closing one the windows I had open solved this stupid sub/super script problem. Indeed Apple should fix this bug.

The gray-out occurs when moving from one document window to another. Here is the solution that works 100% for me. Be sure that the Inspector window is open and set on Text. Click on the top of the inspector window to bring Inspector to the forefront. Then click on the document window where the gray-out has occurred. Voilá.