It's an old, well-documented bug that Adobe doesn't seem concerned about. The file is saving correctly, it's not user error. Acrobat just stubbornly displays the old version of the file. (Preview correctly shows the new updated state of the file.)    Clearly, Acrobat is reading a cached version of the PDF. There are two work-arounds: 1. Use a different filename. 2. Quit/relaunch Acrobat.    No, this "shouldn't happen." Yes, it still does happen after 5+ years and dozens of Acrobat version updates (even just now in v. 20.12.20048.400142.) ... View more

Just noted the bug here in v. 20.12.20048.400142 believe it or not.  ... View more

I've noted and reported this behavior before. It is still unfixed (now v. 20.12.20048.400142) after over five years and dozens of version updates. ... View more

Same red flag for me—security concern because this random error happens to me when Photoshop is NOT the active app. I haven't asked PS to do anything at all, certainly not asking it to open a PDF.   How about this: could it be related to clipboard handling? I know that at least on a Mac, the Adobe inter-app clipboard format is (or at least can be set to be) PDF. And this format conversion can happen as a background task, presumably. So one scenario could be that as I'm working away in another app, I've copied something that includes data that PS doesn't like for whatever reason, or thinks it should be able to convert to PDF but can't.   If assessing the contents of the clipboard IS a standard background task for PS, that would theoretically explain the startling behavior of PS jumping in front of my active app and declaring a phantom PDF to be invalid. If so, then perhaps Adobe should just supress the error until I try to paste into PS and not ... jump up in my face and freak me the heck out. 😉 ... View more

FWIW, I work all day every day along with my coworkers on CS and linked files shared and served from a central fileserver running OS X Server, and I don't experience any of the issues you're reporting. For us, the workflow security and convenience is worth any minor speed overhead, though like you, I do occasionally move projects to my local drive for maximum speed (video work especially, but that's only maybe 1% of the time.) In general, everything works perfectly as designed and expected since modern ethernet networking protocols easily exceed data transfer speed of even local drives from a couple generations back. A networked file is, for most practical purposes, a local file, and they generally behave as such. Generally. I've never seen the PDF export progress dialog other than when switching from Indesign to another application after copying a truly monumental pile of Indesign content. In fact, I can't remember the last time I saw it, and I leave the "Copy PDF to Clipboard" preference turned on (though not "Prefer PDF When Pasting"). I definitely know how annoying it is when things are slow for no apparent reason and I feel your pain. Hopefully it helps knowing that things actually can work over a network the way you are expecting them to: quickly and reliably! That said, give it a try! If moving a project to your local drive FIXES the issues, then you've definitely figured out that your network is the culprit. Whether it's worth the effort to track down and fix it is an annoying call to have to make. But even if it's not worth fixing, at least you'll know you can work fast locally when things get unbearable. ... View more

Agreed. I've never seen Indesign generate a PDF for copy/paste other than on switching from Indesign into another application. So long as you're working within Indesign, it shouldn't be generating a PDF on copy every time. Maybe having the "Prefer PDF when pasting" pref setting checked could affect that... but I don't think that's how it works. I haven't had it turned on in so long, I don't even remember. ... View more

Could be related to several things. If it's a black (K-only) screen representation issue, your "Appearance of Black" settings in Indesign can be adjusted, settings depending on your goals. Could be your transparency blending space settings, depending of course on the placed object and how Indesign has been told to deal with whatever it is. Could be color profile mismatch, depending again on your Indesign file's specific color profile and the color profile of the placed file and also how Indesign has been told to deal with color profile mis-matches. (Indesign might set to convert the placed file through RGB color space even if it is a native CMYK file, resulting in a "rich" CMYK build which will display differently than K-only.) Without knowing all your color workflow and preference settings, it's hard to diagnose. But try a couple things right off: 1. Using Indesign's Separations Preview mode (Window>Output>Separations Preview, then choose "Preview" from the View pop-up menu) basically forces Indesign to render everything to CMYK visual equivalent rather than displaying various elements on the fly. It slows down screen redraw, of course, but can help you track down CMYK conversion and black rendering issues. And 2. Adding a white (paper) rectangle under your whole page renders the page to a white background rather than transparent, which can help you figure out transparency issues. Depending on your document/pref settings, this can change the screen display of transparent objects' darkness. Sorry for the shotgun approach. There are SO MANY variables when dealing with color matching, space, profiles, and conversion. ... View more

In my experience, having "copy PDF to clipboard" is what enables PDF-format copy/paste functionality. If you have that checked in your  Indesign prefs, then Indesign will generate a PDF of whatever Indesign content is in your paste buffer when you switch to another application. That basically takes the same amount of time/processing that it uses to export a PDF file, so if you have a lot of content or very complex content (lots of points/paths) or a very large image as part of the copied material, it can sometimes take a bit of time to take whatever you've last copied and compile that into PDF format ready to paste into AI or PS, etc. This can be exacerbated if you have a slow drive or are working with linked files over a network. For example, if you have a 300MB PS file placed in Indesign and copy/paste it onto another page in Indesign, that function is nearly instantaneous because it's simply duplicating an instance of that image within the Indesign file—just a bit of code that says "place this image here". But if you switch to Illustrator, Indesign has to download and embed that whole image into a PDF package that it can then dump into whatever application you happen to switch to. If you disable that functionality, then all that's left in your paste buffer when you switch apps is proprietary Indesign code, which gets you a lot of nothing when pasted into other apps because they use an entirely different way of describing content. It can be super handy when you need it, and annoying when you don't want it, but at least you can toggle it on and off in prefs. Digression: One interesting thing about PDF format is that it's (pretty much, or at least can be) native Illustrator file format. So when you paste from Indesign into Illustrator, Illustrator "unpackages" the PDF file and you get editable content, even though it's not as tidily built as you'd want (whole lotta nested clipping masks—that's kind of Indesign's thing, having everything in containers). And you've probably noticed that when you paste stuff from Indesign into Photoshop, you get a Smart Object (unless you've opted to paste pixels instead) that then opens in Illustrator, NOT back into Indesign. Why? Because that smart object is a PDF, and AI is CC's PDF "editor." I do dream of being able to set a pref in PS so that placed smart objects from Indesign could round-trip back through Indesign for editing rather than Illustrator... but I'm sure there's a good reason why that feature hasn't been offered. ... View more

I've run into this a couple times, too. For me, it's always been with flowed text, usually with relatively complicated formatting or content (tables, etc.) Whatever causes it for me, I've usually be able to nix the voodoo just by resizing a textblock which forces the text to re-flow. Then I either put it back or undo to get the layout back to how it was before. Might be a completely different issue for you, but the fix is easy enough that you might want to give it a try. ... View more

Indesign uses PDF as copy/paste format. Otherwise, you wouldn't get much in the way of copy/paste ability between Indesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator. It's just a way to format the data into the equivalent of an old-school EPS so that each app can parse the image data as it comes in. You can adjust the functionality in the top section of the Clipboard Handling section of Indesign's Preferences if it's slowing you down, just remember where to turn it back on later when you need to be able to paste between apps. ... View more

Additional follow-up: There really are a TON of bug fixes in this release. Several things that previously would regularly lead to crashes no longer do! And a handful of annoying glitches are also fixed (like how changing a text attribute/setting field would instead delete the selected text, or how you could only see the first 10% or so of a background process progress bar or characters in the Glyphs pallet). Yay! Not a fan of the exasperatingly slow new document window, but I should have seen that coming, just to match the other CC apps' exasperatingly slow new document windows. (Update to my update: I just found that I can opt for the previous "legacy" new doc dialog in preference under General. And it's available in PS and AI prefs, too!) But yes! Thanks Adobe for the bug fixes, and again to Bob and Steve (and Adobe support chat) for helping me get them. And for anyone out there who finds this topic while on a "break," do make sure you have the current bevy o' bug fixes! ... View more

Update: SUCCESS! Chatted with Adobe tech support this morning and we un-stuck the CC Desktop App through a 173-step process involving digging into the bowels of my library and manually deleting various cryptically named Adobe files, followed by a cleansing ritual with three dead chickens and a Macromedia (!!) Cleanup tool, and another reinstall of CC Desktop App. ... And viola! App updates galore! I now have a fancy oddly buttonless Indesign interface and look forward to an unhealthfully long break-free work day. Thanks again to Bob and Steve (and Rajesh who skillfully guided my mouse for 12 minutes or so.) ... View more

Thanks Steve! And uh-oh, now I'm stumped. Tried: relaunching CC desktop app, logging out/in of/to CC, re-installing the CC desktop app from downloaded Adobe installer... no change (still says all my apps are up to date when I ask it to check for app updates.) CC Desktop App looks right, seems to be working, current version ... Any suggestion how to give it a solid nudge in the posterior? I sure don't relish the idea of having to set up all my Indesign prefs from scratch—hope it doesn't come to that. ... View more

Oh. OH! ... But CC says it's all up to date. Any tips? I'm about to feel sheepish, aren't I. ... View more

Thanks Bob. It really was meant as just a snarky way to blow off steam while I waited for Indesign to restart. Gratified to see it bring lukewarm comfort to others—you know what they say about misery and company. That said, here are my deets and a few examples of things that seem to trigger Creative Breaks: Late 2013 27" iMac 3.4 GHz Core i5 with 16GB memory and plenty of disk space running current OS and CC versions: OS10.12.5 (16F73) and Indesign CC 2017 (12.0.0.81) Things that sometimes help me to remember to take a break from productivity: deleting a large table from a flowed text block exporting a PDF again right after having exported a PDF (or doing nothing or anything after PDF export) working on files over a network, you know, like you do if you're at any agency with more than one employee InCopy—doing much of anything for more than an hour or so in a file with multiple icml links, sorry I can't be more specific here I'll add to the list during my next break! (But seriously and sincerely, thanks for the encouragement and support.) ... View more

You've found the Creative Break feature! See this thread: Awesome New Adobe Creative Break Initiative! (I feel your pain.) ... View more

You're right, of course. If it all worked and didn't get in the way, it would be perfectly fine. Some of it will be very useful eventually, I'm sure. I bet a large portion of these services work great and stay out of the way as intended. But even just one rotten one out the the bunch can sour users on the whole thing. A little sad that "staying out of my way" is the threshold for success here, but obviously something in there is clearly not even meeting that bare minimum. Again, a product or feature's "success" for me, a user, does not necessarily equal "success" for shareholders. Who knows—when these two things conflict, maybe the user wins most of the time. I'll be generous and give the benefit of the doubt. But it's a really good example of how a bad roll-out of even just one small part of an initiative can seriously diminish the trust and support of the user base. We're talking about unplugging from the Internet just to use the product, for goodness sake! That certainly wouldn't help any of Adobe's web services initiatives to succeed. It would, as you point out, sacrifice all the ones that ARE working just because of one lousy stinker buried in one or another feature or service. Luckily this is where customer goals and shareholder goals DO align: Adobe should not endanger their success and profitability by launching something that is clearly not working correctly. Of course they know that NOW (I would certainly hope), so they're frantically working on it. For their shareholders' sake, if not mine and yours. Invisible hand of the market, don't fail me now! ... View more

Pat481 wrote: That's beyond acceptable. I'm afraid you're right. Being "off-line" is just next to impossible at this point. We're at their mercy. ... View more

rickhino says: Not weird at all. You're disabling the cloud services that are creating the problem.  Adobe won't fix this one for a long time because they're more interested in the profits they may gain from cloud services. Sorry, did I miss something brilliant? If you've found a way to disable the BloatCloud, please share! Here's a dream of mine: on launch I'd like to see a big button that says "opt-out" that would get rid of non-local fonts, libraries, stock photography, file serving, web publishing, etc., etc. But I'd settle for a "minimize network traffic" mode that simply pushed that crap at me less often and/or only when it didn't disrupt any other activity (I.E. me trying to actually use the app). Drives me nuts that my monthly CC subscription is funding junk that SLOWS ME DOWN rather than work that makes things better. ... But then, as you point out, "better" for the customer is not necessarily "better" for shareholders. *sigh* Makes me wonder if this network traffic is happening on ports that could be ... blocked somehow. Hmm. I don't at all mind Adobe verifying authorization on launch, but sure could do without the rest of the clutter. Let's see, something about port sniffing... Dammit. Wish I was a dev rather than a designer. ... View more

Most likely a side-issue, but you mention that this is a legacy document (“this document as worked since Indesign 2.0”). FWIW, I’ve found that some old, repeatedly up-versioned Indesign files can develop problems. One easy way to clean them up is to export an IDML file. Apparently this strips out gobs of legacy gunk—Indesign basically builds a brand new file when you open the IDML. Give it a try; certainly can’t hurt anything. ... View more

Just a quick follow-up clarification: For me, the issue was resolved by quitting the "CCLibrary" process from Activity Monitor (Mac). However, I had never gotten any error message from Indesign, just the symptom: a short lag/hang every few seconds. ... View more

+1! Dumping the CCLibrary from Activity Monitor fixed the lag issue for me on two machines here at my design company. Wish I'd tried that BEFORE I nuked all my preferences. *sigh* My symptom was a 1-second hang every four to six seconds in all interface elements, even dialogs. SUPER frustrating, needless to say, especially considering that it's a KNOWN ISSUE. Thank you, SangerEby! ... View more

Also experiencing this same issue. Third time now in a couple months. I suspected a network issue but I'm not sure why. Maybe thought it was related to how Indesign can't re-establish connection to a file opened from a networked drive if the network connection is momentarily lost. You know the one, where Indesign calmly and politely explains, ronin-style, that it has to freak out and crash now, as though it knows how silly that is but it just can't help itself. This refusing to save kind of feels like that -- as if Indesign would love to help you if it could, is slightly embarrassed about it's disfuction, so doesn't want to mention it but is more than happy to let you keep working away and export an IDML file it you'd like to actually keep any of your work from now on. So I see hints here and there that Adobe is aware of this, though version updates have come out since I started having the issue. I wonder when it might get fixed. I could use a fix now-ish, or even a little sooner, but until then, I'll just open my wallet here and watch monthly payments continue to fall out. Certainly willing to pay for bug fixes... ... View more

FWIW, just as another data point, I have the app bar and frame disabled and though I previously had the COQ issue, I don't currently. For those who have succeeded in avoiding the COQ bug by turning the app bar and frame back on, does the issue come back if you turn the app bar and frame back off now? Obviously hiding the app bar and frame doesn't cause EVERYONE to crash on quit, so it's probably worth a bit of trial and error to figure out specifically which combination of steps resolves the issue (or makes it come back.) ... View more

Again, I think the challenge is that the crash on quit that happens when Indesign can't save it's prefs can be cause by more than one thing. It's very possible that Adobe has solved multiple causes, just not the one that happens to be affecting you. It was a workspace preset for me, and that's solved now, so I'm not having the COQ problem anymore. For others, it's been permissions, fonts, etc. Hopefully Adobe might consider addressing the root issue: that Indesign crashes if it can't save it's preferences file. Until then, some users will inevitably not be able to figure out the specific reason their preference file can't save, and they'll have to wait for Adobe to address either their specific cause or the general issue. But that doesn't mean Adobe hasn't done anything at all. They're certainly aware of it. It would be nice if there were a general bug notice along the lines of "inability to save the preference file will cause Indesign to crash on quit." That way people could troubleshoot their own particular individual preference-file-saving-issues, knowing what causes the crash (the preference file not being able to save). ... View more

Here's how I'd summarize the situration: 1. Indesign saves it's preference file when it quits 2. Anything that keeps that file from saving causes Indesign to crash on quit 3. There seem to be multiple things that can keep Indesign from saving it's preference file So it seems to me that it'd be very hard for Adobe to "solve" the COQ problem since there is most likely more than one cause. In my case it had to do with a manually migrated workspace preset, so when I removed/rebuilt that, my COQ disappeared. Others have found the problem to be permissions related. Adobe has suggested something having to do with fonts--luckily I didn't follow their suggestion along that line since it wouldn't have fixed the problem, just wasted me a bunch of time. ... View more