Adobe InDesign CC 2018 Crashes when exporting to PDF

Question

My group works with manuals that are approximately 70 documents (total 300 pages) that are in a book. We had no problems when we were using InDesign CS6.  We are being forced into upgrading to CC 2018. When trying to export the book to .pdf the process crashes (the crash screen pops up - then what ever you answer that, InDesign closes.)  Currently the documents live on a network drive. I've moved it to my C drive, and it crashes just the same.  It runs longer before crashing if you export using the interactive choice, not the print choice, but it still crashes.  If you choose the print option and do not ask for bookmarks and hyperlinks, it doesn't crash at all.  The documents are heavy with hyperlinks between sections, I would guess at least 150 in the book, plus the one in the TOC.  I'm thinking it is something to do with a bad hyperlink (or just something odd), but even though the book always crashes at the same place if the book remains unchanged, if you change up the order of the documents, it will fail on another page (consistently) - which is not the same document that it failed on previously.  I've looked at all the likely documents and can't find anything wrong.  Our version is CC 2018  13.0 x64., it is an enterprise license for my employer. Can anyone think of something that I haven't?

Dave Creamer of IDEAS · Answer

Do you get any indication as to what section it is crashing at?

You can try the "binary" method: divide the book in half and ouptut to PDF. See if one or both halves crash.

If only one half crashes, divide that section in half, keep it up until you discover the problem file, page, or graphic.

For example, output pages 1-150 and 151-300.

Say only the front section crashes, ouptut 1-75 and 76-150.

Say only the first section crashes, ouptut 1-35 and 36-75.

Continue until you pinpoint the problem.

OR you can output each file to PDF separately and watch the Utilities > Background Tasks to see what is hanging up. I would start a few files in front of where I thought the problem was happening. A bit of work for 70 files if you don't have an idea of where the problem is happening, however.

Recently, I was working on a 430 page book and, while ID did not crash, it errored out on a particular page. Tried all the tricks--IDML, re-doing the graphics, etc.--but nothing worked. Ended up copying and pasting the contents to a new ID file and it worked fine.

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded