yes, this helps, many thanks Peter. But I can't find the preferences files under
Macintosh: Hard Drive/Users/<USER>/Library/Preferences/Adobe InDesign/<Version #>/<Language>/(Note: Prior to version 6 [CS4] the language folder is not used).
Macintosh: Hard Drive/Users/<USER>/Library/Caches/Adobe InDesign/<Version #>/<Language>/ (Note: Prior to version 6 [CS4] the language folder is not used).
Under the version path there are no files, only the language folder (I have version 8) and after version 6 they are not used for preferences. So I used the four keys option (Cmd+Ctrl+Alt/Opt+Shift) to reset the preferences direct after starting Indesign. This works fine and helps