how to save down from INDD CS5 to CS4

In InDesign CC or CS6, choose File > Save As.

Choose InDesign Markup (IDML) as the type (Windows) or format (Mac OS).

Click Save.

You can now open the IDML file in CS5.5, CS5, or CS4 and save it as an InDesign document.

In exporting a file to IDML, does something change/ gets lost in traslation from the original indesign file? Like missing words, reformatted texts etc? I work with a client who has CS6 (I have 5.5) hence we agreed that every time he updates our files to save it in IDML so I can access them as well. But now he claims that after exporting to PDF (after the IDML), some stuff didn't reflect in the PDFs. Is that possible?

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You can have save as an IDML file..

For those people who don't understand why this is an issue.

Welcome to the real world.

We are not all massive companies, some of us are freelancers (in fact, I'd imagine a majority of indesign userbase are freelancers).  We work with other freelancers, other design houses, tweaking, assisting, collaborating.  So now i've upgraded to CS5.5 I can no longer work in a team with those on lower versions.  No, they cannot afford to upgrade.  And no, they're not prepared to continually interrupt their work flows by some very flakey imports of idml pages - these are buggy at best.  It's a risk they don't need to take and clients are looking elsewhere/ I've invested another thousand a bit pounds and am now losing business.  Many thanks Adobe.

There is no reason why indesign files can't be saved as CS5 and CS4, if some features are incompatible, then these are lost, but seriously - what standard significant changes have happened between 5 and 5.5 - no other piece of software in existence can't save back at least one software version.  I'm now losing work because I dared to upgrade the software and cut off all team members who can't afford the upgrade. It should be made VERY clear on the product pages that indesign cs5.5 cannot save native files compatible with cs5.  Let's see what that does to the upgrade figures.

This is very, very, very bad Adobe. One question I had this morning was "do you run Quark?" - and yes, I do - maybe it's time to ditch indesign, I see that the latest version of Quark happily saves back two versions, also PDF export is less problematic - especially with transparency.

The extra features in cs5.5 are not worth losing work over.  That cs5.5 can't talk to cs5 is an example of the worst of Adobe. I'm thinking of returning the software as not fit for purpose.

This is crazy.

Certainly it's inconvenient, but I wouldn't say bonkers. I admit that I can be pretty addle-brained at times, so I might make mistakes and use features that aren't supported (especially since I don't ever seem to remember when things were added without opeing an older version to see if they are there), and unless you open the file in the previous version after backsaving you won't really see the damage.

Keep in mind, too, that the text engine usually changes in some major or minor way (it was major between CS3 and CS4, and clearly major again for CS5 withthe addition of span/split columns) that can affect the way text is composed and is likely to affect line endings which in turn can have an impact on paragraph line counts and page ends which might cause a chapter run a page long or short and affect everything after (I saw that happen yesterday in the file I was playing with for Eugene). I'd rather know I'm looking at exactly the same thing on my screen as my client is seeing on theirs.

It is not likely that this "problem" will ever be fixed. Every version of InDesign has come with major new features. Saving back is not nearly as simple as you think it is.

And with this release you could wind up with a real disaster on your hands saving back with a document using multiple page sizes, live corner effects and split/spanned/balanced columns.

Bob

Well, just like you'd save out an INX from CS4 to open in CS3, you save an IDML out from CS5 to open in CS4.

I had problem saving down CS4 to Cs3 before. (it need to export etc, and then you need plug ins to open Cs3, which did not work at all) now I have same problem in CS5. I thought Adobe might fix this problem this time...

Uh, what's the problem again? Sounds like you had some problems with INX, and since IDML works pretty much the same way, I'd suggest posting any errors you run into here so we can figure out what those errors are. Relying on INX is a bad workflow, most of the time, but you say it "did not work at all" and since I use that technique every few days without error, it seems like it's not strictly an Adobe problem.