Inspiring

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InDesign 21.2 Undo Greyed Out and History Panel Blank on macOS Tahoe and Ventura

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I installed Adobe 2026 on my imac. Now undo doesn’t work. It’s permanently grayed out. ID 21.2 on a Retina 5K running Ventura 13.7.8.

If you look at screen shot, I can’t undo the neon effect I made or undo the letter ‘M’ I deleted.

I’m opening 2025 ID to see if that helps.

nik.mCorrect answer

Community Manager

Hi Matt, the team is working on a fix for this.

Please share the logs requested in the response from Sanyam(here) along with a video. These would help us investigate things in more detail.

Meanwhile, please try the workarounds suggested in the reply. Additionally, could you try disabling the Generative AI options in InDesign Preferences and let us know if that makes any difference?

Thanks,

Nikunj

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Ben__P

Known Participant

Have had this issue in Tahoe and Golden Gate, even with the latest 27.2. Very frustrating. The fix is simply restarting Indesign and restarting again. When doing this Indesign seems to get locked up so I end up just force quitting it, starting Indesign up again normal, then quite normally and restart again and all is good. I have no logs as nothing really has crashed. Nothing is going on when this issue comes up. Only background apps open would be Outlook, Teams, Apple Music and Safari. Very frustrating to say the least.

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furzle

Inspiring

Yes this is not just a tahoe deal, I'm on golden gate and it's a serious problem - no undo, history panel not showing anything except "open"

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StephenBishop

Participant

I’m soon going to undo installation of all Adobe products and their crappy generative ai.

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Harshika Verma

Community Manager

Hi @StephenBishop,

Thank you for your patience. We understand how frustrating this issue can be, especially when it disrupts your workflow. We're truly sorry for the inconvenience and the experience you've had so far. This is certainly not the experience we want for our users.

We'd like to assure you that this is a known issue, and our team is actively working on investigating it.

As part of the ongoing investigation, the team is collecting diagnostic logs, as mentioned by Sanyam in this community post.

It would be extremely helpful if you could share the requested logs with me via private message. This information will help our team investigate the issue further and work toward a resolution.

Additionally, if you're referring to the Generative AI-powered Alt Text feature in InDesign, you can disable it by navigating to Preferences > Generative AI and adjusting the relevant settings.

We sincerely appreciate your patience and cooperation while we work on this.

Looking forward to your response. Please feel free to reach out if you need any assistance with collecting or sharing the logs.

Thanks,

Harshika

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Aaronius

Participant

Indesign 21.6 - Recently updated (20 days ago)

Mac mini with Tahoe 26.5.2

Green memory pressure.

This is getting ridiculous.

I noticed my mouse not changing to the rotate icon, and that tells me I’m in for trouble.

Undo no longer works.

Thankfully I could save this time

Indesign DOESN’T quit - have to force quit.

Have to restart the Mac, otherwise the problem just comes back in maybe 20 mins?

Wow. Maybe go back to designing apps FOR the system instead to these weird “I want everyone to be in the cloud, let me design through electron or summink apps” honestly.

And get Acrobat fixed - where has preflight gone?

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leo.r

Community Expert

Try resetting your preferences and caches:

https://www.rockymountaintraining.com/adobe-indesign-rebuilding-preferences-cache/

Also, make sure Full Disk Access is granted to InDesign in System Settings > Security & Privacy.

Will it make a difference?

And get Acrobat fixed - where has preflight gone?

Post Acrobat questions here:

https://community.adobe.com/p/acrobat

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aaronmjones

Participating Frequently

I’ve observed in our fleet that resetting the preferences does not fix the issue. It seems to have an effect, but this is largely because quitting InDesign and reopening is part of the process. The issue does come back; the period of time for it to return seems to depend on how large of projects you are using, and what features you are accessing, though it’s not a definitive pattern (as of yet).

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dang75203737

Participant

This is still broken in InDesign 21.6 running the latest OS, ADOBE [cursing removed] , seriously sort it out, we pay you so much money for the basics to just work

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Abhishek Rao

Community Manager

Hi @dang75203737,

Sorry to hear you're still experiencing this issue with InDesign 21.6.

Please refer to the highlighted response in this thread and share the requested logs captured when Undo stops working. These details will help the team investigate the issue further.

Additionally, please go to InDesign > Preferences > Generative AI, disable the Generative AI options, restart InDesign, and check whether that makes any difference. Please also let us know your exact macOS version, whether the History panel stops updating when Undo becomes greyed out, and whether restarting InDesign temporarily restores Undo.

Please share the results along with the requested logs.

^

Abhishek

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Rob37354788v9pq

Participant

Is there an update on this?

It’s more linked to a GUI or a backend process bug. Not Undo. Undo is just the cause and effect of it.

I have had Undo failing after a period of time, forcing me to quit ID. I think Undo is the main culprit, since it constantly saves a state somewhere. But I’ve caught it locking up ID just by clicking on a menu item to bring up a dialogue window, which then freezes on that window, and you can carry on using ID but cannot remove the frozen window. For example, clicking on the FX tab to bring up a mini drop-down window, and it won’t go away or close. But ID is still working. But lots of options, like Undo, are suddenly greyed out.

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graphics_4075

Inspiring

You are probably experiencing what is already a known bug over the past few months:

I would start with checking your Memory usage in the macOS Activity Monitor.

Also make sure to check your history panel when unable to undo and note if it functions correctly: does it update? are you able to revert to previous “versions” by clicking on the history panel?

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Cheers

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lauren_2617

Participant

cmd+z indesign not working. it will work when i first open the doc but switch off at some point. have to restart the software to resolve it. edit>undo also appeared greyed out and unclickablei'm running on macOS tahoe 26.6, and indesign 21.4.1. I have also disabled generative AI features in my indesign preferences, restarted the machine and programs, uninstalled and reinstalled the indesign software, reset my preferences, and nothing fixes it. the issue has been happening randomly happening on and off for the past 8 months, spanning different versions of indesign. though random, it does seem to have a worse and more frequent effect the larger the file size.

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Abhishek Rao

Community Manager

Hi @lauren_2617,

I'm sorry you're continuing to experience this, especially after already trying several troubleshooting steps.

Could you please provide the requested diagnostic information mentioned in the accepted response, including the Memory Pressure status and Terminal logs captured when Undo stops working? Please also try the suggested workarounds, such as restarting InDesign and testing with 21.1 if possible.

Additionally, please update to the latest InDesign 21.5.1, disable both Generative AI options under InDesign Preferences, restart InDesign, and test again. If the issue persists, please let us know whether the History panel also stops updating when Undo becomes greyed out.

Please keep us posted on the results so we can continue investigating this with the team.

Abhishek

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Matt

Participant

I’m using 21.4.1 - this absoultely needs to be fixed as a top priority - not being able to undo make the software unusable

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nik.m

Correct answer

Community Manager

Hi Matt, the team is working on a fix for this.

Please share the logs requested in the response from Sanyam(here) along with a video. These would help us investigate things in more detail.

Meanwhile, please try the workarounds suggested in the reply. Additionally, could you try disabling the Generative AI options in InDesign Preferences and let us know if that makes any difference?

Thanks,

Nikunj

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Spirited_Rainbow5684

Participant

i have the same now, undo is grayed out. apple M1 sequoia 15.7.4.

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SKelly

Participant

Is there a fix for this please? Using 21.4.1 and Mac OS Tahoe 26.5.1, and Undo/Redo functions are greyed out and unusable as per other user’s reports.

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SKelly

Participant

Further to this, I’m finding that the cursor constantly reflects the previous tool’s function rather than the active tool. I’m not an expert but this might reflect a general memory issue with this programme? Nothing already suggested in these threads fixes either of these issues for me. This is all very frustrating and is rendering this programme close to useless. Everything takes considerably longer than it should, and it is hard to use the active functions.

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SKelly

Participant

If anyone has any suggestions please, please share.

Adobe please fix this ASAP.

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kyle_2357

Participant

HOnestly Adobe … WTF???? I’m experiencing ALL sorts of bugs in your software.
Unable to move grouped objects, unable to undo …. some fairly simple stuff that no longer works.
Its completely UNEXCEPTABLE. You guys are dropping the ball. I’m sick of work arounds too.
Resetting preferences is not acceptable. (It also didnt work) Its annoying having to set up a workflow all over. None of your subscribers should have to put up with this. Stop releasing untested software.
Get the basics right -- and FIX it !!!!

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leo.r

Community Expert

Unable to move grouped objects

It sounds like a bug in InDesign 21.4 that was fixed in 21.4.1. Is your InDesign updated? Also, what’s your operating system version?

Resetting preferences is not acceptable. (It also didnt work) Its annoying having to set up a workflow all over.

In general, I agree that resetting preferences can be a lousy solution, especially if should be done regularly. Some of the settings can be restored if you export them before the reset via the User Settings menu. I’m not sure if all settings can be restored this way as I didn’t have to reset them for years, fortunately.

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SKelly

Participant

I’m using 21.4.1 and it hasn’t fixed the bugs

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