20.2.0.36 often crashes when export to pdf

Hi @Denni27,

Thanks for sharing the details. I checked but couldn't find any crash reports submitted under the community email address associated with your profile. Could you please confirm if you're seeing the Adobe Crash Reporter dialog when InDesign crashes? If yes, it would be super helpful if you could submit the crash report and mention an email address in the description field. Once done, please share that email address (DM me via Community), so I can track it down and investigate further with the team. Reference: Submit Crash Reports.

Also, as Robert rightly pointed out, we’ve a known issue related to Typeface on InDesign version 20.2.0.36 (Reference: https://adobe.ly/42sh3jp). If you happen to use Typeface or any other font manager, I’d recommend isolating that variable by testing the PDF export in Safe Mode to see if the issue persists. You can boot your Mac into Safe Mode using the steps here: Apple Support – Safe Mode.

Also, does this crash happen only with a specific InDesign file or with all documents, including a brand-new one? If you haven’t tested this yet, could you try exporting a simple new file to PDF and let me know what happens?

Looking forward to your update. 

Abhishek 

Have you tried resetting your InDesign preferences? If this problem is the result of program corruption then resetting preferences (which restores the program to its defaults) may take care of things.

To reset preferences:

For Macintosh Users: The User Library folder in which InDesign’s preferences are stored is hidden by default on most Macintoshes. To access it make sure that InDesign is closed and click on the desktop to launch a Finder Window (Command-N). With this window in column view follow the path User>Home folder (it’s the folder with an icon that looks like a house—it may have the user’s name rather than “Home”) and click on the Home folder. With the Option Key pressed choose Library from the Finder Go Menu. “Library” will now appear within the Home folder. Within the Library folder find the folder called Preferences and within it find the folder called “Adobe InDesign” and the file called “com.adobe.InDesign.plist” and delete both that folder and that file. When InDesign is next launched it will create new preference files and the program will be restored to its defaults.

For Windows Users: You can try the quick way of resetting on a PC which is to hold down Ctrl + Alt + Shift when launching InDesign and respond affirmatively when asked if you want to reset. There have been some recent reports that the window asking if you want to reset is not popping up but that the prefs are being reset anyway. If this works great but if it doesn’t you may have to manually delete them.

To do so: On Windows 7 and above the preference files are hidden. To find them go to the Control Panel and open Folder Options and then click the View tab. Then select “Show hidden files and folders” or “Show hidden files, folders or drive options” in Advanced Settings. Then delete (or rename) the folder at the end of this path: C:\Users\<USER>\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\InDesign\<Version #>\<Language>. Make sure that InDesign is closed when you do this. When you relaunch the program it will create new preference files and the program will be at its default settings.

The advantage of manually deleting preference files is that after you’ve reset up the program (make sure that no document window is open) to your liking, you can create copies of your personalized “mint” preference files (make sure that you quit the program before copying them—that finalizes your customization) and use them in the future to replace any corrupt versions you may need to delete.