Participant

Question

Indesign 21.3 keeps crashing when exporting PDF, but only around mid-file

Forum|Forum|24 days ago
April 29, 2026
3 replies
147 views

I’m working on a book, 288 pages. Plenty of images, all .eps files as I’m working with spot colours for risograph printing. I’ve been working with this set up for years and I never had this issue. When I try to export the file, the app crashes, and as it took some 30 seconds before the crash I thought that the file was too heavy for my machine (Apple Silicon M1, 2021, 16BG running Tahoe 26.2 with >1TB memory available). So I started splitting the export in smaller parts. It all went ok for pages 1-49 and pages 50-99, but when I went to export pages 100-149 the app crashes, sometimes immediately, sometimes after some 10-20 seconds of exporting. I found it consistent with the first export attempts of the whole file, which occurred after some 30 seconds—maybe some file is corrupted around mid book and if I skip that batch and proceed to export pages 150-199 I might be able to isolate the error and keep exporting the book. But the same occurs to this new export attempt. Sometimes, after the app crashed, a dialogue box with some text and what seems to be the reason for the error (red text) flashes on the screen, but it’s literally 1/10 of a second, so no chance to get any info from it.

Anyone has any idea on how to proceed? I tried to update the app to its latest version and now I’m uninstalling it an reinstalling it. I’m also planning on downloading the shole package to another Mac and try to do it from there.

oooreriAuthor

Participant

Thank you both for your suggestions. So far I have managed to export smaller portions of the book, some large and others consisting of a single page, and to assemble them afterwards in Acrobat. I have tried to export both from the original file, and copying portions of the book (or the entire book) to a new file and then exporting that (quite annoying because I have to change the page numbering to each new file otherwise the pages would go back to page 1) as suggested on the troubleshooting help page. I also updated, uninstalled and reinstalled the app. And save it as .idml file and export it from there, same result.

In general I can’t pinpoint where the problem is because I’m struggling with many parts of the book. Sometimes I get this pop up below, or a similar one, but i’s unreliable because, for example, in this screenshot I’m trying to export page 191, not page 2. I sometimes open the background task panel and it just shows me the percentage before it stops, but again, sometimes it happens immediately, other times it takes a couple of minutes, and other times 20 seconds.

I have managed to export a “smallest size” preset PDF in 2 large files, so I’m suspecting it is related to the size of the file, but it does really fluctuate and my laptop is still fairly ok—I also tried to export right after a restart of the computer, with no other apps open, and even in this case it stopped.

@Abhishek Rao thanks for the suggestions, I have submitted a few crash reports.

oooreriAuthor

Participant

Update: I have installed InDesign 25 (all previous attempts were done with InDesign 26) and I managed to do a first export in 3 batches, but for some reason the printing service I have sent the file to wasn’t able to accept it (it’s an automated process and the system said the file dimensions were wrong, despite the fact that they are in fact correct). So I tried to export it all at once, but the crashes started to occur also in this earlier version of InDesign. I’m now resorting to lighting a candle to the Virgin Mary or perform some other kind of magic ritual. Anyone has any idea on what is going on here?

Abhishek Rao

Community Manager

Hi @oooreri,

Thanks for sharing all the additional details and testing steps so far. I was able to locate the submitted crash reports, and I’m currently checking this further with the product team to better understand the root cause of these export crashes.

In the meantime, if possible, could you please share the affected file after packaging it using the steps here:
https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/preflighting-files-handoff.html#package_files

Having the packaged file would really help with the investigation and replication attempts on our end. If the file is confidential, feel free to share it with me via DM using any publicly available cloud sharing service like Google Drive, Dropbox, or similar platforms.

Looking forward to your update.
Abhishek

Abhishek Rao

Community Manager

Hi @oooreri,

Thanks for reaching out and sorry to hear you’re running into this.

I checked for any submitted crash reports linked to your community email but couldn’t find any. If you see the Adobe crash reporter after the crash, could you please submit the report and either use your community email address or share the email used via DM so I can track the logs on my end. You can also refer to this guide for submitting crash reports: https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/kb/submit-crash-reports.html

Also, adding to the expert’s suggestion, please try the steps mentioned here to isolate any file-related issues: https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/kb/troubleshoot-file-issues.html. Along with that, please try exporting the file to IDML, reopen the IDML file, and then export the PDF again to see if that resolves the issue.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Abhishek

Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Community Expert

Are you watching the background process panel to (possibly) see what is hanging up?
Also, try disabling the background process.

Finally, trying breaking down pages 100-149 in half. Export each half.
If one fails, break that section in half.
Continue breaking sections in half until problem is pinpointed.

David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

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