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smeckdesigns
Inspiring
August 5, 2026
Question

Can't close Indesign

  • August 5, 2026
  • 4 replies
  • 26 views

After a very, VERY long list of new bugs that appear in the Adobe suite like copy and paste not working, constant crashing and instability, indesign is coming to a new low. 
Since the last 2 updates I can't even seem to close Indesign without using force close in the Windows task manager?! How can I get this program to close without having to resort to bashing it with the Windows banhammer every single time.


Running the latest version of CC and indesign, no background tasks active and  everything works except every single native option to close the program!
And with a 14th gen i7, 16GB CPU and 64GB DDR5 it's not a performance issue.

Strangly when using the free Affinity tools there are none of the horrible and inexcusable bugs that a billion dollar company can't seem to fix.

    4 replies

    Abhishek Rao
    Community Manager
    Abhishek RaoCommunity Manager
    Community Manager
    August 5, 2026

    Hi @smeckdesigns,


    I'm sorry to hear you're having such a frustrating experience. Could you please confirm the exact version of InDesign you're using? By "latest," do you mean 21.5, 21.4.1, or another build? You can check this by going to Help > About InDesign.

    In the meantime, could you please try the following:

    • Manually reset your InDesign preferences and test the issue again. The steps are available here (see the video at the bottom of the page): https://adobe.ly/4xmMMAj

    • Go to Preferences > Generative AI, disable both Generative AI options, restart InDesign, and check whether it closes normally.

    • Temporarily disable any third-party plugins, or test the behavior by starting Windows in Safe Mode to rule out plugin or system interference: https://adobe.ly/4buUi3M

    If the issue still persists, could you please share a short screen recording showing the complete workflow, including your InDesign version (Help > About InDesign) and what happens when you try to close the application? Also, if possible, please let us know whether reverting to an earlier version, as suggested by the Community Expert, changes the behavior.


    Looking forward to hearing back.

    Abhishek

    S
    smeckdesignsAuthor
    Inspiring
    August 5, 2026

    *edit* Surpise... The reply function also has bugs and removes the post then posts it twice... And this was from my phone so not the same machine as the original post. 

    BobLevine
    Community Expert
    BobLevineCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    August 5, 2026

    Try rolling back to an earlier version.

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