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mattp26461402
Participating Frequently
March 5, 2026
Question

InDesign 21.2 Hanging with Spinning Beach Ball When Opening .INDDL Files (macOS 15.7.4)

  • March 5, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 23 views

Indsign 21.2

Mac OS 15.7.4

 

Hangs randomly on open and save of .inddl files. Happened with 3 separate files so far.

Open for 2 files would simply freeze with spinning beach ball.

Save just started- file will open, then the last text change made by contributor populates on my screen and the asterix comes up showing I have unsaved changes, so I cannot close the file unless I save. Sometimes get a save progress bar that does not move. Sometimes not.

Restarted, reset prefs and cache. Logged out of CC. No difference.

Only workaround is to open file in cc app and duplicate it. This creates a new file that has to be shared again for editing and review, which is to say a pain resharing and updating links to our editors.

    1 reply

    M
    mattp26461402Author
    Participating Frequently
    March 6, 2026

    Now it will hang if I simply open the file and wait for a minute. Beach ball starts spinning, have to force quit. Cannot save or do anything with the document.

    M
    mattp26461402Author
    Participating Frequently
    March 6, 2026

    Disabled Typeface and reset preferences again and is working as expected for the moment. I am suspecting Typeface or Indesign is trying to activate a font.

    E
    Community Expert
    Eugene TysonCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    March 6, 2026

    It does sound like font activation is the likely culprit, especially since disabling Typeface seems to stop the freezing.

    Adobe InDesign will try to activate fonts when opening or saving documents, and if a font manager or auto-activation plugin misbehaves it can cause exactly what you're describing beachball on open/save, or a document suddenly showing as modified when it finishes activating fonts.

     

    A couple of things worth checking:

    In Typeface, try disabling the InDesign auto-activation plugin rather than the whole app and see if the problem returns.

     

    Check whether the document uses fonts that aren't locally installed but are being auto-activated.

     

    If the files are InDesign cloud documents (.inddl), network latency can make font activation stalls look like save freezes. Which is likely where your issue is coming from - files in the cloud - does it hang when the files are local?

     

    Also worth testing with Adobe Fonts sync temporarily disabled to rule that out.

     

    If disabling Typeface fixes it consistently, it's almost certainly the auto-activation hook between Typeface and InDesign, not the document itself.

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