Participant

Question

Book Crashes Repeatedly InDesign When Importing Text Chapters

Forum|Forum|4 months ago
January 15, 2026
5 replies
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Hi. Very much a newbie. I was feeling good, having nearly finished formatting my first InDesign novel. After my nearly final WYSIWYG copyedit, I decided to experiment adding a left/right header (author name/book title) to the parent page to see how it would look. The header appeared properly on all appropiate Chapter 1 pages and to suppress it on the chapter's page one. Then I tried to use synch to apply the header to the remaining 42 chapters. The synch failed after two or three additional chapters.

On principle, I've never touched CoPilot, ChatGP, or any of that, but Google AI has been indespensible in getting the novel formatted, giving useful answers to convoluted questions even many lines long. This time Google advised me to export my front matter file and the forty-three text chapters to IDML, save them with new file names back to .indd, create a new book with a new file name, and add the newly 'cleaned' front matter and 43 chapters to the new book.

I did most of that. BUT...now when I tried today to add the 'idml-cleaned' indd chapters to the new book this is what happened. The front matter file and Chapter 1 added easily and I was able to save the book. Chapters 2 through 27, at every attempt, whether all at once, or individually, crash InDesign. Chapters 28 through 43 added correctly. I have a saved book with front matter, Chapter 1, and chapters 28 through 43.

I have no clue why. There's nothing unique about those twenty-six chapters I can't add. No quirky styles, layers, images, any of that. In my newbieness, I often did things manually that pros would automate, but I did that equally for all chapters, the ones that fail to be added and the ones that don't. It's a straight text fiction novel.

Does anyone have a clue? If not, what important info am I not giving you? There are no font issues; I've found and dealt with all those before this current thing began.

With Microsoft stuff, I've had a couple of good experiences (and a couple of useless ones) getting chat or phone support from actual Microsoft techs. Does that even exist here? Are Adobe techs reading these forum pages?

Thanks,

frank gaipa

Abhishek Rao

Community Manager

Hi @ovevs,

Thanks for the details so far. Could you please confirm whether you are working with the Book file and chapter documents from a local drive or a synced or network location? If you have not tried already, please move everything to a local drive and check if the issue still occurs.

Also, please let me know if this problem started after a recent Windows update and was not happening earlier. To help verify this, open PowerShell, run the command Get-HotFix, and share a screenshot of the output. This will help me see the Windows updates installed on your machine.

If possible, please share a short screen recording showing the workflow from adding chapters to the Book up to the crash. If the content is confidential, you can share it via direct message.

Lastly, confirm whether the crash is silent or if you see the Adobe Crash Reporter. If it appears, please submit the report and share the email address used (via DM) so I can check the logs. You can follow the steps here: https://adobe.ly/3NAyACj.

Looking forward to your update.

Abhishek

O

ovevsAuthor

Participant

Limited time today. I've been attending Oakland's Noir City film series for several days and ending this Sunday. Unfortunately, I have to attend most of another Bay Area film series, The Mostly British, beginning Feb. 5.

My Windows 11 is set to update automatically. I do all of them. The following is from the PowerShell command (easier to paste than screen capture):

Windows PowerShell
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Install the latest PowerShell for new features and improvements! https://aka.ms/PSWindows

PS C:\Windows\system32> Get-HotFix

Source Description HotFixID InstalledBy InstalledOn
------ ----------- -------- ----------- -----------
OVEVS Update KB5067931 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 11/1/2025 12:00:00 AM
OVEVS Update KB5048779 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 3/15/2025 12:00:00 AM
OVEVS Update KB5050575 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 3/15/2025 12:00:00 AM
OVEVS Update KB5054156 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 10/8/2025 12:00:00 AM
OVEVS Security Update KB5074109 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 1/13/2026 12:00:00 AM
OVEVS Update KB5071142 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 12/2/2025 12:00:00 AM

PS C:\Windows\system32>

I'm not sure I know how to do a screen recording, but just before Noir City started I discovered that several chapters in the original book were not saveable. That is, the entirety of what was to be my final copyedit and formatting were there. I could open each chapter, but when I'd close the chapter, InDesign would demand that I save, then say that the chapter was corrupt and could not be saved. When I got the chapters back out (below) into Word, nothing that I could see using Word's reveal formatting pilcrow (¶) suggest any problem with the chapters that became unsaveable.

So I've successfully copy/pasted all formatting and text out of each of the forty-three chapters and one frontmatter file into new Word docs. Beginning Monday, I'll drag these new Word chapter into a new (third) INDB book, in effect starting from scratch. Nothing that I can see while activating

If these new Word files and the resulting new INDD files lead to further crashes when I get them into the new INDB, I'll do my best to document that here. I'm uncertain whether I ever saw Adobe Crash Reporter. If I did, it was only once and rather late in the game. The rest of the crashes were, as you say, 'silent.' If the Report did pop up, I would have hit send or whatever it is; I always do. None of this mess has affected Adobe Photoshop where I'm simulaneouly working on the KDP bookcover.

Now I'm out of time until Monday. Thanks for responding.

fg

B

Bokverket

Same problem that a book crashes repeatedly. Returned to version 20.5.1 x64. Same thing.

Saw that Adobe welcomes sending files in for analysis. But that disappeared, not just the community link. Please tell me the way to do that.

Also, can't find the fix Prerelease build - 21.2.0.27. Followed the instructions but there is no Apps tab on CC.

leo.r

Community Expert

Also, can't find the fix Prerelease build - 21.2.0.27. Followed the instructions but there is no Apps tab on CC.
By @Bokverket

Pre-release is in the upper right corner:

leor_0-1768611580766.png

If your window isn't wide enough, then Pre-release will be conveniently hidden, and you'll need to keep pressing that arrow until it shows up.

O

ovevsAuthor

Participant

My original post (Book Crashes Repeatedly InDesign When Importing Text Chapters) is here: https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/book-crashes-repeatedly-indesign-when-importing-text-chapters/m-p/15664978

The probelm started after adding a left/right author name/book title header to my parent page. Using synch in an attempt to spread that to all chapters kept crashing InDesign. After everything mentioned in the above thread failed, my concern became saving the forty-three chapter's text on which I had just finished a possibly final copyedit without duping each change to the original word manuscript. The new indb book I created crashes InDesign each time I attempt to any chapter except Chapters 28 through 43, even though all forty-three chapters and one front matter file have been "cleaned" by IDML (InDesign Markup Language) export and return to indd. So I went to my indb-old book to make sure my recent copyedits were still there. The text is there, but one file in particular, Chapter 2 crashes InDesign each time I save it. I can open it. It's contents are all there, but I cannot save it. In a panic I exported the indd Chapter 2's recently edited text to a new Word doc.

I'm very near to deciding to start from scratch, by doing the following:

1). Copy/paste the text from each copyedited-indd chapter into a new Word file, forty-four files including front matter.

2). Reconstruct (or just find) my KDP template.

3). Create a new indb file based on that.

4). Populate the new indb book using text from my forty-four new front matter and text Word files. I think I recall that the correct way was to us Place (never copy/paste) to populate the books new chapters.

First time round I did nearly everything manually using InDesign's superb WYSIWYG. Using Place to populate the chapters retained all of my Word formatting (paragraph first-line indent, raised--not dropped--first cap at each chapter start, a very few centered inset lines, etc., all of it). I still don't understand how to use paragraph styles or why I would have needed them since Place, for instance, retains all the paragraphs. Cleanup after Placing was minimal.

Watching YouTube how-to videos and constantly querying Google AI which is very good about InDesign, I burned more than a month getting to that final WYSIWG copyedit where I thought I was read to export PDF and start work on the ePub.

So here's my big important question: Any tips on avoiding winding up with a third InDesign-crashing indb file?

Thanks,

frank gaipa

O

ovevsAuthor

Participant

PS - Is there any reason to think that the text I copypaste from an unsaveable indd file into Word will be unsuitable when I Place it into new indb book's new chapter file? The text in the unsaveable indd files is complete in every way; nothing is missing or where it shouldn't be.

thanks,

fg

Willi Adelberger

Community Expert

Did you try to not syn hronize the whole ook at once but only 4 or 5 chapters step by step?

Synchronizing many chapters requires a lot of RAM? How much do you have? If other applications are running, shut them dowv?

do you use primary text frames on your parent/master pagrs as I would recommend?

O

ovevsAuthor

Participant

This desktop machine's less than a year old, Windows 11 with 128GB ram. When I tried synch, only Edge and possibly Filemaker were running besides InDesign. On future tries, I'll make sure to have only Edge and InDesign running.

Primary text frame is new to me. I just watched a six minute video on it. Not sure if I can convert already existing chapters to primary text frames. I don't see that symbol when I highlight the parent spread's text frames (one right, one left, plus page number footer and author/title headers) so they probably aren't primary text frames, but text did flow to next pages when I added or removed lines within the chapter during final copyediting.

In my answer above to Anubhav, I pasted part of the latest Google AI response.

thanks for responding,

frank gaipa

Anubhav M

Community Manager

Hello @ovevs,

Thanks for reaching out. Could you try copying the layers/objects from the problematic files into a new file, then importing them, to see if that helps?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Anubhav

O

ovevsAuthor

Participant

Import as new file sounds like what I've been doing. After the idml export and save back didsn't work for those chapters, I tried repeating the export to idml and save back back as indd a couple the original indd chapters. Didn't help.

I'm running out of awake time today, but Google, among other things, says this:

Step 2: Use the "Place" Method for Stubborn Files

If any specific file still crashes InDesign after being opened and saved as a fresh INDD in Step 1, the corruption is likely structural or involves hidden metadata. A reliable workaround is to use the "Place" command to import the clean data into a new, blank container file.

For any chapter that continues to crash:

Create a New Blank INDD: Go to File > New > Document and create a blank InDesign file with the exact same page size, margins, and bleed settings as your book chapters. Save this as Chapter_XX_BlankContainer.indd.
Place the Problematic Content:
- Open the problematic Chapter_XX_Fixed.indd file you made in Step 1.
- Select all the content on all pages (You may need to unlock items on master pages if you use them).
- Copy all the content.
- Go to your Chapter_XX_BlankContainer.indd file and choose Edit > Paste.
- Use the File > Save As command for the container file.
Add the Container File to the Book: Try adding this newly created Chapter_XX_BlankContainer.indd to your main book file.

If I understand Google correctly, 'placing' the twenty-seven chapter's content might lose my formatting from Word, creating possibly dozens of hours work. I just finished what I thought would be the final copyedit. Like I said, I'm new at this. I haven't even had time today to delete the header that started all this and seeing if that returns normalcy.

Thanks for responding,

frank gaipa

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