Participant

Answered

InDesign 2023 makes a read only file

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
October 27, 2022
68 replies
74436 views

I have just updated to the 2023 InDesign, and now suddently my documents are read-only and I cannot save the file, but have to make a save as version and give the document a new name everytime I have to save my work.

Do you know why this is happening? And how to avoid this?

Performance

Correct answer Abhishek Rao

Hi everyone,

Thank you for continuing to share your feedback and experiences regarding the read-only file issue. I wanted to provide an update that a bug has already been logged with the product team, and they are currently looking for additional diagnostic information to help identify the root cause.

If you're able to reproduce the issue and have access to an InDesign Prerelease build, the team would greatly appreciate logs from an affected system. To enable logging, please create an empty file named ENABLE_DOCUMENT_OPEN_LOGGING inside the following location:

/Applications/Adobe InDesign 2026 (Prerelease)/Resources/Cookies/

If the Cookies folder does not exist, please create it first and then create the empty file inside it.

On macOS, you can create the file from Terminal using:

touch ENABLE_DOCUMENT_OPEN_LOGGING

Once logging has been enabled, please reproduce the workflow that causes the document to open as read-only.

After reproducing the issue, please collect and share the contents of the following folder:

macOS:
~/Library/Caches/Adobe InDesign (Prerelease)

Windows:
C:\Users<username>\AppData\Local\Adobe\InDesign (Prerelease)

These logs will help the engineering team better understand what is happening during document opening and permission handling.

If you're able to provide the logs, please let me know and I'll help coordinate getting them to the team for analysis. Your assistance would be extremely valuable in helping us move this investigation forward.

Thank you again for your patience and continued cooperation.

Abhishek

Show previous replies

pifath67

Participating Frequently

We have had this problem for over a year now and I think for the not so small amount we pay for this software we can expect such a serious problem to be solved gradually.
It affects 3 MACs with Ventura and InDesign 18.5.
Working is extremely inefficient and the risk of errors is high.
After all, we are working in a production environment here and not for a hobby....
So, is it to be expected that there will be a solution soon?

D

Dan291424714xu2

Participant

This is still happening on 18.5, PC Windows 10. Do we have any further update to this? @HARSHIKA_VERMA

J

Jim27186468bpg8

Participating Frequently

I am not sure this thread is even being monitored anymore.

MissTheClash

Participant

Harishka posted a little over a month ago that they were still working on the issue. My guess is there's nothing new to report. Frustrating because we're about to begin work on our 18 section catalog which for the 2nd year will be a festival of read only warnings and wrong file deletions

J

Jan284177508w2p

Participant

FYI

Updated to v18.5 today.

3rd file I open is read only again.

This is ridiculous.

B

BriGuyOSC

Inspiring

Mine's working fine. I haven't noticed any Read Only issues since the 18.5 update yesterday and have turned Windows Preview back on to test. Every InDesign file I've opened since has opened correctly... at least, so far.

Now, previewing multi-page PDFs in Windows Explorer, that's another story... ("previous page" button is suddenly grayed out; can only click the "next page" button).

At least InDesign seems to be behaving at the moment.

B

BriGuyOSC

Inspiring

OMG, thought it was just me, something with my computer or with our network drives/settings. Been blowing up our IT guy w/ emails/screenshots, LOL! Had this same thing start happening yesterday.

Harshika Verma

Community Manager

Hi @BriGuyOSC,

We are sorry to hear you have started experiencing the issue again. Would you mind confirming if it's happening with all or a specific file? Have you tried the below workaround to solve the issue?

Workaround:-

Disable Preview Pane in Explorer- >View-> Preview Pane.
Close InDesign, Restart the system.

We will make every effort to assist you with the issue.

Thanks,

Harshika

B

BriGuyOSC

Inspiring

Hi, @30611042 ,

The workaround does work for me, so that's what I've been having to do for the time being. It does seem to have something to do with the Preview Pane.

Oh, and it's all files. Our files are saved to a Synology NAS.

Thank you!

Harshika Verma

Community Manager

Hi All,

We would like to express our gratitude for your patience. The team has fixed the issue on the Windows machine in InDesign 18.4, and you should restart the machine once after updating to InDesign 18.4 version.

Please let us know if you're still experiencing the issues on your Windows or Mac machine.

Please also try the workaround suggested below:-

Disable Preview Pane in Explorer- >View-> Preview Pane.
Close InDesign, Restart the system.

We will escalate to the team for further investigation.

Thanks,

Harshika

Rene-Buko

Participant

Is anyone also having problems with Adobe Acrobat. The PDF files are also always read-only.

Harshika Verma

Community Manager

Hi @Rene-Buko,

Sorry to hear that. Would you mind posting your question in the Acrobat community, where our experts would be able to assist your better?

If it's an issue with the InDesign file, then please try the suggested workaround until the fix is out.

Thanks,

Harshika

K

Kailah Ann

Inspiring

I met with Harshika the other day as well as one of the developers and I can assure everyone on this thread that they are working very hard to get this issue corrected - and I believe they're incredibly close to doing so.

This issue seems to be happening mainly with high-security computers and computers that use an array of networks/drives. In addition, they have to work with the IT department that controls these computers, which makes their job all the more difficult.

It's also worth mentioning that they met with me at 1:00 P.M. EDT, which I believe is close to midnight in their time zone. I have complete faith that they will fix this issue and they have shown the utmost dedication to finding a solution.

If you would like to help move things along, please private message Harshika with your contact information as she asked previously. Otherwise, please be patient, respectful and remember the golden rule.

J

Jim27186468bpg8

Participating Frequently

That is more of an update than we have ever had. Which is all we needed...someone to keep us calm. Thank you!

J

Jim27186468bpg8

Participating Frequently

I am at the end of my rope with this Read-Only nonsense.

I

Isabelle Mercier

Participant

Me too...I have the most recent version 19.2 and I am still experiencing the read only issue. It opens fine but as soon as I save once...it goes to read only....grrrrrrr.....

A

adrih24445711

Participating Frequently

the only way that I have found to avoid it, is by not using the preview panel in your microsoft folders.

Manju_M

Participant

Go to: System Preferences > Security & Privacy > [unlock the lock icon in the bottom left corner] > Full Disk Access> Add InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator etc., any affected programs. Close program and restart. This worked for me

C

christopherl36437830

Participant

I have the same issue. One thing I found odd is the file that was opened as "READ ONLY" did not create a lock file .idlk Even though it was opened.

K

kylee2948402043cm

Participant

The issue of read-only documents in InDesign 2023 might be due to file permission settings. To avoid this, you can try changing the file permission settings or check if the document is saved in a read-only location. Additionally, you can try resetting the InDesign preferences or updating the software to the latest version.

N

Niklas29482630pdzr

Participant

Hi, already checked this, actually the whole IT Department doesn't know how to solve this... we already tried everything you could imagine 😞

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