Inspiring

Question

InDesign 2026 closes itself/crashes whenever I close my last open document

Forum|Forum|11 days ago
February 11, 2026
5 replies
97 views

NOTE: I posted some of this as a commiserating reply to a similar thread, but it wasn’t the exact situation I have, so I’m posting this here again as a separate problem. Any feedback, help, etc., appreciated. Thanks in advance.

I’m using Windows 10, and I am having a problem with InDesign 2026.

Whenever I close my last open document -- at least half the time, and totally randomly -- InDesign will close itself -- basically, crash.

In earlier versions, when I was done with all my open documents, I would just close them all, then open whatever new doc I wanted to work with. But now, when I close that last open document, InD also closes itself. When I reopen it -- which is annoying to have to do over and over -- InD offers an opportunity to open that same last document, only now with a warning that it might be corrupted. So, clearly, it didn’t properly save that last document, which puts any “last document” I close at jeopardy of corruption. So, that is two problems -- abrupt closing and possible document corruption. (I won’t tackle here the fact that InD 2026 will not maintain either the view or the workspace I choose, those are very aggravating bugs also.)

For now, I have to constantly remind myself to open my next working doc -- or a blank one -- before I close the last one I’m finished with. The only hint of a solution I’ve found is a suggestion to clear preferences, which I’m loathe to do because I have SO many preferences unique to my work. But also, I get the sense that this is NOT a preference problem.

Either way, this is clearly a bug, and possibly a hard one to track down since it happens only about half the time, but there’s no predicting when those times will be -- which makes it even more difficult for me to remember that it might happen. And then it does and I’m pulling out my hair again.

I HOPE SOMEONE FIXES THIS SOON!

Abhishek Rao

Community Manager

Hi @casinclaire,

Thanks for sharing the update. To help narrow this down further, could you please confirm the exact InDesign 2026 version you’re currently using? When you have a moment, I’d recommend first testing this in Windows Safe Mode to rule out any third-party software or extensions that might be interfering: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/start-your-pc-in-safe-mode-in-windows-92c27cff-db89-8644-1ce4-b3e5e56fe234.

Next, please let me know whether GPU Performance is enabled or disabled in Preferences, as this can impact stability in some cases. Note that this option may appear greyed out depending on your display settings. You can refer to this guide for more details: https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/kb/gpu-performance.html.

Could you also confirm whether you’re using a custom workspace or one of the default ones? If it’s a custom workspace, please try creating a new workspace, switch to it, and test if the behavior changes.

In addition, it would be helpful if you could test this under a new Windows user profile to rule out any account-specific issue: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/manage-user-accounts-in-windows-104dc19f-6430-4b49-6a2b-e4dbd1dcdf32.

If possible, please also share a short screen recording showing the full workflow leading up to the crash, so I can review it further.

Looking forward to your update.

Abhishek

casinclaireAuthor

Inspiring

That’s all more than I have time to do right now as I’m in the middle of a big deadline. But all good suggestions and I’ll try them when I’m a little more caught up. I’ll have to suffer through it for now. But re the GPU, it is disabled.

Mike Witherell

Community Expert

Hi Claire,

I would make sure you have installed Windows Update (KB5077181) or the equivalent for Win10

Good housekeeping each week, empty these Temp folders:

C:\Users\YourUserNameHere\AppData\Local\Temp

C:\Windows\Temp

Make sure your hard drive is healthy (requiring some utility tool to test it) and make sure it is not over 75% full (which causes most desktop windows computers to bog down).

Make sure you have installed InDesign to its latest patch version. InDesign 2026 is 21.2 which fixed many bugs

As far as I know, the InDesign prefs files themselves become corrupt, and they must be replaced/reset/regenerated. Here is how.

Mike Witherell

casinclaireAuthor

Inspiring

Thanks, Mike. I’ll empty those temp files. I do so once in a while but am not in the habit of doing it weekly. I’ll change my ways! I’ll also double-ck my version and make sure I’m on the latest. I’ll probably bite the bullet, too, and reset my preferences. Maybe it’s time after all these years. As for Windows itself, I updated twice this week just to be sure. So I have to assume I’m okay there. As for hard drive space, there’s a-plenty! I have four large HDs on my system, and everything is well distributed, so that is taken care of.

I appreciate your continued communication about my issues. :)

C.

Mike Witherell

Community Expert

Hi Claire,

Just to rule out other common things, have you also emptied your 2 Temp folders and rebooted lately? Do you have any utilities to explore the health of your hard drive?

Mike Witherell

casinclaireAuthor

Inspiring

Please specify which two temp folders you mean (within the InD install or system wide, etc.). I don’t want to miss emptying the correct one.

I don’t have any specific hard drive health tools, but I can tell from the way my machine is acting that this is not an overall system problem. It is only with the 2026 InD update. I installed it when it first came out and had similar problems. I uninstalled it and gave it a few weeks (during which time my system worked fine) and decided to reinstall and give it another shot. It still has the same bugs it had the first time I installed it, but now I have too many docs created in it to go back without a big hassle and risk of damage to my long book layouts.

P.S. QUESTION -- When InD preferences become corrupt, do you know if it is the actual preference file(s) or only something that happens to them when they interact with the program? If the latter, then I would assume the files themselves are okay and I could save them and restore them after resetting. But if it is the files on my hard drive themselves that become corrupt, this would be pointless to do. Which do you think is the case?

Abhishek Rao

Community Manager

Hi @casinclaire,

I hope that expert’s suggestions helped and that the issue is now resolved. Could you please let me know if you’re still experiencing InDesign closing unexpectedly after installing the latest Windows updates and testing again? If the problem persists, please share your observations so I can check this further.

Looking forward to your update.

Abhishek

Mike Witherell

Community Expert

Hi Claire,

It may be related to a faulty Windows Update from January. Go to visit Windows Update and allow any patches that recently (February) are available. Let them install and reboot and see if the problem persists.

If you still have the problem, try resetting InDesign preferences (there are up to 4 ways) and reboot and test again. Let us know what your outcomes are.

Mike Witherell

casinclaireAuthor

Inspiring

Hi, Mike.

I installed Windows updates, but made no diff. I haven’t yet reset my preferences as I’m in the middle of a 400-page book layout and don’t have time to deal with it at the moment.

I did make a few small tweaks to my current preferences (some that had reset during the 2026 upgrade that I hadn’t recustomized yet) and then closed InD so those tweaks to preferences would take effect. As I closed, I saved my document when asked and got no error indications. I reopened InD. Once completely open, it immediately offered to open the last document I had PROPERLY SAVED, giving the message that that document “might be damaged, etc.”

As it stands right now, I can’t close any document I’m working on without first opening a new blank document so that I have a throw-away document handy that I can close last, because about half the time, when I save my doc and close it (not intending to close InD), InDesign closes itself and, inevitably, reopens with “damaged document” messages.

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